Levon's Trade (Levon Cade Book 1) (12 page)

They chained him. They gave him a beating. No malice. No questions. They took turns. Just following orders. All part of the job.

Tupo gave Dimi a shot to the gut that loosened his bowels. A stream of bloody shit sprayed over his legs. They dropped him to the straw then and went back to their card table.

Uncle Symon had left before the stripping and chaining and beating. Now his uncle was back. Virtually, anyway.

“Get him up,” Uncle Symon said.

Tupo and Yvan lifted Dimi and dropped him in a chair. Tupo handed him what was left of the beer. Dimi sipped, struggling to keep it down.

“Have you had time to think, Dimi?” Symon said from the phone.

“I told you, Uncle. Maybe the bikers know.”

“We spoke to them. They do not know the man. He is a stranger to them. I believe them.”

“I swear to Christ I don’t know either,” Dimi said. Tears started in his eyes. His throat closed with the effort not to sob.

“Something at Skip’s. You know. Skip’s.”

“The place in Tampa? I know it.”

“This man Cade killed our people at Skip’s. Robbed us. This was before he killed your father.”

Dimi licked his lips and nodded.

“Did you sell drugs there? Did you make trouble there with someone, Dimi?”

“I told you and told you and told you, Uncle. I don’t sell drugs anywhere. I’m not a dealer. I’m a wholesaler. Why can’t you understand that?”

“Hit him,” the face on the phone said.

Tupo slammed a fist into Dimi’s face. Dimi heard a wet snap. He tasted blood in his mouth.

“Again. Just to hurt.”

Tupo slapped Dimi across the ear with an open hand. Dimi couldn’t believe, even after the beating the night before, how much it hurt. An explosion inside his head followed by a dagger of pain from his ear. A high whistling sound drowned out everything for a long moment.

“Enough.” Symon sighed.

Tupo stepped back. The assault via Skype was on pause for now.

“You are not telling me the truth. You think that lying will keep you alive,” Symon said inches from his face.

Dimi stared at the fuzzy image filling his field of vision.

“You are a man because you can take a beating. Then we show you that you are no man. We treat you like a bitch.”

Dimi watched Yvan hand the smart phone over to Tupo who held it close to Dimi’s face. Yvan walked away and returned a moment later with a push broom. He snapped the broom handle over his knee, leaving a two-foot section in one fist.

Yvan spat on the end and grinned.

The world pixilated and then went red and then black.

Dimi was off line.

40

They were in a block-walled building set into a hillside well behind the cabin. Accessible by a hard-packed walkway and enclosed by a cyclone cage. Gunny hit the combination on the keypad flawlessly. He swung the heavy steel door open to let them in.

The familiar smell of gun oil and Cosmoline. Fluorescents in the ceiling winked on. The room was ten by ten and lined with racks of weapons in protective sleeves. Above the racks were shelves of ammo boxes. The back wall was stacked with cases in wood and high-impact plastic.

“This room is some kind of prepper’s dream,” Levon said unsheathing a government model Thompson submachine gun in pristine condition.

“Preppers. Screwballs, I call ’em. Got a pack of ’em over the hill diggin’ out their half-assed bunker on weekends instead of golfing or barbecuing.”

“So, why do you have all this shock and awe in your backyard?”

“Just an old jarhead who can’t sleep right without some strike capability handy,” Gunny said smiling.

“You have anything newer than Iwo Jima?”

“Fuck you, Slick. I got whatever the hell you need to get you out of whatever corner you’re in. What are you looking for?”

“A long gun. Something for range and a good scope that’s not fiddly. A rifle, an M4, without all the aftermarket bullshit. And two handguns. One for serious work and the other for hideout.”

“Let’s go shopping.” Gunny grinned and ran his fingers along the racked rifles and shotguns.

Levon picked out a cut-down M-4 with a heavy rubberized forestock. Gunny told him it had a reinforced action and worked as smooth as a duck’s ass. For the long gun he stayed with the classics: a Winchester model 70 in a Rynex stock. The handgun choices were a Sig Sauer nine and a hammerless Colt snubbie in .38 special, both in stainless.

“These are all off the books?” Levon said.

“Hell, not only are they not here now, they never was anywhere,” Gunny said, pulling down fresh boxes of ammo and magazines for the Mike and Sig.

Before they were done Gunny insisted Levon take a shotgun, a cut-down Mossberg Mariner with a pistol grip.

“Nobody was ever sorry they brought one of these along,” Gunny said.

“You know you’re not getting any of these back, Gunny,” Levon said.

“I’m countin’ on it. You use ’em and lose ’em. Just bring your ass back here to your little one.”

“I think I have what I need here.”

“How about a few bricks of C-4, Slick?”

“I wouldn’t say no.”

They made four trips from the arsenal to the gravel lot in front of the cabin. Levon dropped the tailgate of the Avalanche.

“You can’t take the truck you came here in. You drove it up from Tampa. They’ll have the plates,” Gunny said.

“I’ll switch plates somewhere on the road.” Levon lifted two plastic ammo cases up onto the gate. Gunny put his hand on Levon’s wrist.

“You’ll take our Ranger Rover. She’s old but she runs good. You switch plates on her and you’re in stealth mode again.”

“Can’t do that.”

“You will or you ain’t leaving here.”

“You were never able to keep me any place I didn’t want to be, Gunny.”

“That hurts. That’s cold, Slick.”

Gunny’s smile broadened as his grip on Levon’s wrist tightened.

“All right. I’ll take the Rover. Joyce won’t mind?”

“She won’t.”

A final squeeze and Gunny released Levon’s wrist.

They loaded the Rover and went inside the cabin for breakfast.

41

“What girl? Who is this girl?” Uncle Symon’s face filled the screen.

“A girl. I was in Skip’s. College girl.”

“All of this for some bitch? What is this bullshit?”

“The police came looking for her. They came to Skip’s. They learned nothing.”

The image on the screen shifted then settled. Uncle Symon’s dark eyes studied Dimi’s face across the space that separated them. The secret to Dimi’s entire future was in those eyes.

“What do the police know, Dimi?”

“Nothing! No one told them anything. Not a fucking word, uncle.”

“Who was this bitch? Who would come looking for her?”

“I have all of that. I mean, I can get it. I sold her driver’s license and credit cards. I can tell you who.”

Dimi gave the name and location. Symon wrote them down then broke the connection, cutting off his nephew as the man began to plead to be released.

Symon selected a cell phone from the row on his desk and called Karp and Nestor.

42

Dr. Roth rode back home in the back seat with Marcia’s body in the trunk. The two men removed him from the car, the smaller man holding his elbow to help him into the house. The larger man hefted Marcia from the trunk and carried her up to the porch and inside.

It was all so unreal. He was naked in broad daylight. His wife was being brought home with half her skull missing. Over the border hedge in the front yard he could hear a neighbor’s leafblower whining. Children shouted at play somewhere down the street. High overhead the contrail of a commercial jet cut the sky in half. All around life went on even as Jordan Roth’s world teetered at the edge of oblivion.

The smaller man kept watch on Jordan while he pulled on clothing and packed three more changes into an overnight bag with no attention to coordination.

“Your pad?” the smaller man asked holding out a hand for the zippered bag.

“In my office.”

The smaller man gestured and Jordan led the way downstairs. There was a sharp chemical smell in the air. Gasoline. Coming from the cellar.

The larger man rejoined them as they were leaving the office. He had three dark bottles cradled in one arm. He’d been in the cellar. Jordan was curious as to what vintages the man chose to take. They exited the house together. Jordan was allowed to sit in the back seat. His bag went in the trunk.

He looked from the rear window of the car as they backed down the driveway to the street. A fog of smoke was rising from the basement window wells. A fire.

A pyre for Marcia.

They left the Roths’ now-former address, and the tony neighborhood they’d called home for thirty years, for a golden strip lined with shopping marts, car dealerships and standalone stores.

The car made its way east in fits and starts, stopping at every Walgreens, CVS, Target and Walmart. The car would park in the fire lane while the doctor would write a prescription for various Schedule Three drugs. Tylox, Oxycontin, Empirin, Fiorinal, Ativan, Halcion, Librium, Valium, Xanax, Amytal, Nembutal and others in generic and brand names. His captors were knowledgeable of doses and legal prescription amounts.

The two men took turns entering the drug stores and returning to the car after fifteen and twenty minute waits. The big man did not want to talk but Jordan found the smaller of the two a willing conversationalist.

The smaller man, the pretty boy with the predator eyes, explained that they were using a collection of credit cards under various names to make the purchases. So, the pick-ups were essentially free to them. A fortune in forbidden prescriptive narcotics and depressants worth many times their market value in the right places. This was all a bonus above what they were being paid for their current assignment.

The doctor wasn’t certain if they meant to keep him alive for his surgical skills or merely until his prescription pad was empty. This couldn’t go on for long. Even now the fire would have been discovered. Jordan and Marcia Roth would be feared dead in the fire. Was there an apparatus to shut down his status as a qualified scrip writer once it was determined that he was either missing or deceased?

He took some comfort from them allowing him to pack a bag with a few days’ worth of clothes. Of course, they might have done this to give him a false sense of his own security; to make him compliant. These were heartless men, ruthless men. But they were professionals. Their every action branded them as such. In that way he felt a kinship with them: men skilled at an unpleasant task that required certain skills and a high level of expert detachment to perform. Like killing a fellow human being or sawing into the skull of a living subject.

They were parked before a Target. Jordan sat quiet in the back seat with the bigger man munching a protein bar behind the wheel. The smaller man exited hurriedly and took the passenger seat. He spoke to the driver in Russian. A brief exchange followed. The big man nodded his head toward the doctor.

Jordan held his breath.

“Find a motel,” the smaller man said.

Jordan exhaled.

They were keeping him for now.

43

“Rotten luck,” a member of his party called after him in accented English.

He was handicapping himself so as to not show up his guests. They were piss-poor golfers but he dearly wanted their business. No trouble falling on his ass a few times to give them the win if it meant getting the fat contract they offered.

His cell tingled in his pocket as he was using his driver to part the ferns in search of his little white Titleist. It wasn’t a number he recognized.

“Garrett. Lone Star Solutions. How can I make your world a safer place?”

“That shrapnel still giving you a hitch in your getalong?”

Levon Cade. Holy shit. Cade was identifying himself using a reference from a shared adventure in Manila. An RPG brought down their chopper. Garrett remembered little after that except that Cade was always there, always by him, until they were safe back aboard the
Stennis
.

“Only in the cold weather, brother.”

“Can we talk, Tobey?”

“This is a business line. I can call you back in two hours. The number on my display good for you?”

“Yeah. For a few days. Talk to you then.”

The call ended.

Tobias hacked away at the ball to free it from the rough, taking four swings, and still came to the green one point behind the best player in his foursome. Arabs were shit at golf. Tobias sank the putt to take the hole.

44

The parting from Merry had been hard. It might have been better if she’d cried. She held it back, not letting him see how his leaving was tearing her up. He looked back once in the rearview. Merry turned to bury her head in Joyce’s shoulder. Gunny stood by waving.

A cell buzzed and lit up on the console by him. It was the phone he’d assigned to Tobey Garrett. He touched the tab on his earbud cord.

“Thanks for getting back to me. We’re secure.”

“Am I going to have to throw this phone in the lake after I hang up?”

“You might have to find a volcano to drop it into.”

“Shit,” Tobey hissed in his ear.

“I need intel. You’re private sector now. Is that going to be a problem?”

“I still have my resources. It’s what I trade on. What do you need?”