Levon's Trade (Levon Cade Book 1) (7 page)

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.

22

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.

Levon 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. Levon 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 Levon 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. Levon 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. Levon 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. Levon 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
BOARS
and
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 Levon’s forearm.

“A few times here and there,” Levon 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.”

“And nobody knows you,” the guy said.

“You think I’m a cop.”

“What am I supposed to think?”

Levon held out his hands. They were big hands on thick wrists and rough with layers of callus.

“Ever see a cop with hands like that?” Levon said. He’d worked two years of construction with Wiley and Manners before moving into security two months prior.

“So you’re not looking for someone. But you’re looking for something. Am I wrong?”

“I’m looking to buy.”

The guy studied Levon’s eyes, searching for some kind of truth in them. He nodded and took his back off the door.

“Give it ten minutes and come on out to the picnic tables,” the guy said and left the room.

23

The guy from the men’s room sat at a table with another man and a woman. The other man was an older, heavier biker with a dense beard and brittle gray hair held back with a leather-thonged pony tail. The older guy said something and the woman got up and wobbled back to Hattie’s, carrying longneck empties.

Levon stood regarding the two men. A scuff of boot soles on gravel behind him. He held his hands out from his side as hands expertly patted him down. They came to the long slide in a pancake holster at the small of his back.

“That stays where it is, hoss,” Levon said, eyes on the older man who nodded. The hands left him.

“Sit your ass anywhere,” the older man gestured. A patch on his leather vest read
DUTCH
.

Levon straddled the bench across from the older man, keeping one foot outside. The third man, the patdown man, leaned on a table top off to one side. The guy from the men’s room stayed, taking pulls from a Coors longneck.

“Dougie tells me you want to buy. What are you looking for?” Dutch said.

“A half pound to start. Price depends on quality. If it’s good I’ll want a lot more.”

“We’re talking ice, right?”

“I want anything else I’d be somewhere else.”

“How’d you hear about us?”

“Jungle internet. I hear I should go to Cotton Lake if I want to buy weight. My only question is quality,” Levon said.

“It’s Mexican. You can’t get weight domestic. Too many restrictions on the goods,” Dutch said.

“That’s been our problem. No supply.”

“Seven kay for a half pound.”

“Five kay. We can up it to twelve for a full bag if the shit is what I’m looking for. I can use five pounds a month to start,” Levon said leveling his gaze on Dutch’s eyes.

Dutch blinked at that. Sixty thousand a month. He smeared his Marlboro out on the scarred table top.

“You local?” Dutch said.

“I’m down from up north. Rust belt. Way outside your market.”

“You come off 75? There’s a Cracker Barrel at the next exit south. Have breakfast there tomorrow.”

“That’s it?” Levon said.

“That’s it. Bring the five kay. Don’t worry about the bar tab.”

And that was goodbye.

He drove back to 75 and took a room at a Red Roof near the Cracker Barrel.

The next morning the guy from the men’s room the night before slid into the booth across from him at Cracker Barrel. He plucked a breakfast link off Levon’s plate like they were old pals. Levon gestured to the waitress to fill his friend’s coffee cup. The guy wore a print shirt loose. His hair was road whipped.

“You got something for me?”

Levon placed an envelope of bills on the table. The guy took it with a grin for the waitress who loaded up his cup from a carafe. The envelope went under his shirt. The guy took a sip then put a cell phone on the table and slid it to Levon. It was new. A pay-as-you-go burner.

“That’s it?” Levon said.

“You’ll get a call then you get your stuff. We don’t know you.”

“But I know where to find you.”

“That’s right.” The guy grinned showing missing teeth. He got up and was gone.

Levon finished his breakfast and paid the check. The cell buzzed as he was walking to his truck. Dutch was on the other end.

“Your goods are under the front seat of your truck.”

“This James Bond shit is getting tired.”

“We’ll get to know each other better. Maybe I’ll let you fuck my sister.”

“What about the weight we talked about?”

“If you like the shit we can do that.”

“When?”

“You keep the phone Dougie gave you. I’ll call you tomorrow late. Give you time to confirm how outrageous my shit is.”

“Then we do a serious deal.”

“We’ll talk then.”

The phone went dead.

Levon drove north for Tampa. He pulled off at the exit for Seffner and went into the rest room at a Wawa carrying the Target bag he’d found under the front seat of the Avalanche. In the stall he opened the bag to find a paper envelope containing a sandwich baggie loaded with tiny rocks. They looked like dusty diamonds. He unzipped the bag and dumped the contents in the toilet and flushed.

24

“How can you drink that shit?” Dougie’s nose wrinkled at the smell of faux hazelnuts wafting off the other biker’s mug.

“You keep up drinking your shit black you wind up with the reflux, brother,” Dutch said while wrapping the stack of Grants with a double strap of rubber band.

“Think this guy’s for real?” Dougie said.

“His money is. You told me he went into the Red Roof alone, no reservation. No phone calls. Never talked to anyone.”

“We don’t know him. This deal could be the set-up. Next time it’s him and an army of staties.”

“Doesn’t matter. We can’t handle the weight he’s talking about anyway,” Dutch said taking a sip of the milky mess in his mug. It left a frosting on his mustache that he licked away.

“It’s a lot of money, Dutchie.”

“It’s a lot of hassle and a lot of heat. Let him deal direct with the Russian. We pick up points off the deal. Ten percent maybe. That’s eleven kay we didn’t have last night without any real exposure.”

Dutch picked up one of three cell phones he had on the table and punched send then send again. A female voice answered on the other end.

“Tell Dimi to pick up, bitch.”

25

It was Dutch.

“You got a meet two days from now. You know Channelside?”

“Tampa. Where the cruise ships come in.”

“That’s right, brother. There’s a bar. Upper level. The River Rock. Four o’clock.”

“I hear you.”

“But first you have to prove you’re up for the deal. We need to know you’re for real.”

“How do I do that?”

“Use the cell I gave you. Take a picture of your cash and send it to me. Five minutes.”

The line went dead.