Levon Cade Omnibus Read online

  The bullet caught him at the arc of his leap over the fence before the water slide. It ripped a furrow through the muscle at the back of his right calf. It was bleeding steadily. His whole leg went numb. Useless. He was dragging it now, feeling the pain begin to build as nerve endings got over their initial shock.

  He called out as he shambled along a twisted path. There had to be someone here. Somebody had to hear him. It was the fucking state fair. The place was huge. There had to be someone still working here. Cleaners. Security. He’d call 911 himself but he’d left the cell phone behind when he bolted.

  No one answered his cries. The grounds backed up on surface streets. If he could reach one of them there would be cars and people. Someone would help him. He didn’t care who. All he wanted was to get away from the maniac who was shooting at him. And Tupo and Yvan. He really wanted to get away from those two sick fuckers.

  He stopped screaming then. The man after him and his former captors would hear him. They were probably already looking for him. There wasn’t time for Tupo and Yvan to have made it back to their car. They wouldn’t leave anyway. Not until they were sure it was over.

  55

  It wasn’t over.

  Levon was across Martin Luther King and into the ground’s parking lot. He pulled the Rover as close as he could to a fair entrance. He jerked his gear bag from the back seat and leapt a turnstile to enter the grounds.

  Between two exhibit halls, he stopped long enough to pull the Mariner from the bag. It was fully loaded with a plastic rack of five more twelve-gauge cartridges mounted on one side of the action. He grabbed a fistful of cartridges and stuffed them in a pocket of his windbreaker.

  The cries from inside the park died away as he reached the benches before the water slide. He marked the direction of the shrieking voice. He found the splash of blood where his target jumped the railing. He was over it and following the spatters deeper into the amusement area. The target was taking a winding path, using cover. The blood trail was thinning; a collection of spots here and there as blood vessels collapsed around the wound.

  The target was getting farther away as he followed the path of the waning blood trail that wound back and forth. He stopped tracking and headed on the straightest path for where he’d heard the last call for help. There was a bloody smeared handprint down the side of a corndog stand as he crossed the target’s trail again. He stepped onto a broad midway and moved along one side at a trot, ears open for any sounds. The target was close. The target would break cover soon or hole up.

  Levon didn’t hear the first shots meant for him.

  A jet flying low overhead on its climb out of Tampa International drowned out all sound with its passage. Concrete shards sprayed over the ground striking his legs. He turned, shotgun up. The larger of the two men who’d escorted Dimi into the park was running toward him between rows of seats set before a band shell. The man had an automatic raised in his fist, emptying it on Levon’s position.

  The second man, the Mongol warrior, was not in sight.

  Levon dropped and rolled under the tarp of a concession stand. Rounds punched holes in the canvas. Glass from the canopy of a food warmer showered everywhere. Levon was out the back of the stand and moving low along a narrow alley that ran behind rows of stands. It was crowded with trash bins and stacked cartons. He was coming to the end of the lane when the second man stepped into view off a concourse.

  Pumping round after round into the Mariner, Levon walked toward the man. Two loads of buck took the Mongol high in the chest, throwing him backwards. A third raked his legs as he fell. A fourth tore through the air, taking out the glass in front of a ticket kiosk. A nickel-plated handgun spun from the falling man's hand.

  Levon stepped into the concourse and emptied the last round, a rifled slug, into the fallen man’s head. The man’s face vanished in a red mist. Levon slid over the counter of a concession stand. He lay on his back, reloading the Mariner, then settled down to listen.

  A voice called in Russian, becoming more hushed as it approached. In the inch or so of clearance under the tarp covering the front of the counter, Levon could see a pair of feet approaching. They were in leather loafers, alligator maybe.

  A hissed curse as the wrestler came into view of his fallen comrade. Levon held his breath and waited. The shadow of the man was visible through the sun-washed tarp.

  Levon fired through the cloth. Three rounds of buck. He heard an agonized grunt as he rose to his feet. Levon trained the shotgun down on the big man lying in the dust of the concourse with his legs shot away. The man had fallen with his gun hand under him. He was struggling to roll and free it.

  Another load of buck and a slug dropped him.

  That left the prime target.

  Levon reloaded as he walked.

  56

  He caught up with Dimi Kolisnyk at the back of the grounds.

  A parking area under sheltering oaks rose from the medians that separated the lanes.

  The target made it to a high fence separating the fair from a residential neighborhood. He was hobbling along the fence line trying to find a way through, dragging the wounded leg behind him.

  He never heard Levon coming through the trees toward him.

  A round of buck swept his legs from under him.

  He lay whimpering, raising bloody hands to Levon.

  His mouth opened and closed soundlessly but for a whistling whine from deep in his throat.

  The next load was center mass.

  It lifted him from the ground in a cloud of dust.

  His body was thrown against the fence.

  The next stilled his convulsions.

  His hands fell to the ground.

  Levon dropped the shotgun where he stood. He stripped off the bloody windbreaker as he walked back into the fairgrounds. He shoved it down in a dumpster and walked on. The flannel shirt he wore underneath was a black and red check that hid the blood soaking into it.

  There were no sirens until he reached the Range Rover. By itself, gunfire alone, even inside the city limits, was not a cause for immediate police response in Florida. He hooked a left off the lot and passed a pair of Tampa police cars whirling lights as he drove to the on-ramp for I-4 East.

  He didn’t stop until he saw the first signs for Disneyworld. That meant traffic and delays ahead. He pulled off and passed a few fast food joints and convenience stores until he found a gas station with an exterior men’s room. He washed the blood from his hands and face in the sink and changed from his flannel shirt into a hoodie from a Kohl’s bag. He took the flannel shirt with him in the bag.

  Levon ate breakfast at a Waffle House where he was advised that the Disney traffic usually died down a little after eleven. He grabbed a coffee to go and waited in the Range Rover until the eastbound lanes lightened up.

  At long range parking at Orlando International, he took the Florida plates from a car without a layer of dust on it. He waited until he was past the city of Orlando and had hooked back west toward Apopka before switching the plates.

  He listened to a news and talk station on the radio the whole way. No mention of a triple homicide in Tampa. Three dead white guys weren't worthy of breaking news these days.

  It was evening by the time he turned the Rover onto 10 West for Huntsville.

  Gunny Leffertz said:

  “We all think of home until the day we have to come back and try to be the man we used to be. Then home can be the worst place on earth for us.”

  57

  Joe Bob Wiley looked twenty years older than the last time Levon had seen him. The man sat on the edge of the great room sofa he'd been sleeping on. Slept in his clothes for days maybe. The house smelled of fried food and stale beer.

  “Wife left me. I told her to but I think she wanted to go. She won’t be back now, that’s for sure,” he said, rubbing the bristles on his face.

  “You understand, this is the kind of news I had to tell you face to face,” Levon said.

  “I know. I
know that. Thank you.”

  The men listened to the sounds of geese flying over the house for the lake. Joe Bob sat forward studying the carpet. Levon sipped the beer that the boss had insisted he help himself to.

  “Is there any chance?” Joe Bob looked up, eyes red and tired.

  Levon shook his head.

  “Can’t even have a funeral,” Joe Bob said.

  “I’d give that time. The police are still putting it all together.”

  They listened to the quiet a while. Levon set down the half-empty bottle on a counter and stepped away from it.

  “I owe you some money,” Joe Bob said standing.

  "No, you don't. I didn't deliver."

  “To hell with that. I pay my bills.”

  Joe Bob left the room and came back with a checkbook, one of those big corporate books. He leaned on the counter and wrote it out in a shaking hand. Levon stood watching him tear the check from the book ever so carefully. He handed the check to Levon. Fifty thousand.

  “Shit, you had expenses, right?” Joe Bob said. He tried to tug the check from Levon’s hand. Levon yanked it back, folded it, stuck it in his shirt pocket.

  “I covered them. Consider this my severance. We’re even.”

  “You’re not coming back to work for me?” Joe Bob said. He looked relieved when Levon shook his head.

  “I can’t stay here. I kicked something over down there. They won’t let it rest.”

  “What about me? They said they’d come back.”

  “That’s just talk. They have their own problems. You can even put that away,” Levon said. He nodded toward the shotgun leaning on the sofa.

  “Well, okay then,” Joe Bob said. His right hand fluttered at his side. Levon did not extend his own.

  Levon walked alone to the Range Rover past the empty dog run. He drove for the interstate and Mississippi.

  He stopped twice for gas and once for Wendy’s drive-through. He got off the highway in Florence to pull up to a Walmart just long enough to stuff the endorsed check from Joe Bob into a Salvation Army pot.

  58

  An anonymous call led Florida state police to Trevor Lee Manklin (AKA' Dutch') and Douglas Raymond Ziemba (AKA 'Dougie') who were both in traction at Haley Veterans. Manklin suffered from multiple fractures to his legs and a split pelvic bone. Ziemba had several crushed vertebrae and broken ribs.

  Blame the sweet, sweet painkillers or just being too damned tired and pissed off, the two bikers cooperated.

  The next day cadaver dogs discovered the body of a Caucasian female aged eighteen to twenty-five in a grave dug for her in the scrub pines around Cotton Lake. She was packed in quicklime to hide her scent. No coyotes had dug her up.

  She was tentatively identified as Jenna Marie Wiley. Her father flew down to Tampa to confirm it. Cause of death, as determined by the District Six medical examiner, was asphyxiation from the victim aerating vomitus into her lungs. Toxicity reports came back indicating high doses of Rohypnol in her blood. She was probably conscious as she died but with motor functions reduced to the point where she could not help herself. She just lay there and drowned. These details were not shared with the girl’s father who didn’t appear to have full control of motor functions himself.

  State CID found enough DNA evidence at the home of one Dean Collins to establish it as the place where the Wiley girl died. Collins was three drawers down from Wiley in the cold room at the Hillsborough County morgue. His death was under investigation but appeared to be a part of some kind of gangland retribution. Two John Does lay in drawers near him; both found dead on the State Fairgrounds by Tampa cops responding to a shots fired call. A third shooter was being sought.

  The two broken bikers had rock solid alibis.

  It was a month later when a bolt action rifle with scope mounted atop it was found on the roof of a Holiday Inn off I-4. Two window-washers, Haitian illegals, discovered it when they were rigging their cage platform to one of the gantries along the roof line. They argued over what to do with it until one accepted forty bucks from the other for the right to keep it. The Model 70, rusted from exposure to heavy winter rains, was stuck in the back of a closet and forgotten after Patrice Saint-Felix’s wife refused to let him hang it on their bedroom wall.

  Barely mentioned in Tampa newspapers and websites was the apparent suicide of a local area businessman. Simon Kharchenko was apparently despondent over the recent death of his sons in a tragic single car accident near Ybor.

  59

  Spring comes slowly to upstate Maine. Snow lays in hollows in the woods until late May most years. The low sunlight takes its time reaching back into the piney deeps. The winds at night make one think that summer is a hope as far away as heaven.

  In the warm confines of William King Elementary, it was career day. It was a small school with less than a hundred students and many of them siblings. Mom or dad or both were invited in to explain what they did for a living and answer questions from the kids. Doctors, veterinarians, car mechanics, truck drivers, skid operators, store owners, and web entrepreneurs were joining the classes, giving talks or demonstrations the whole day long.

  Mrs. Balfour was concerned for Mary Tallmadge, a new student who'd arrived mid-year to join her fifth-grade class. She was the only student whose parent had not shown up today.

  The little girl was by herself taking some cookies from the refreshment table set up in the gym.

  “Is anyone coming from your house to give us a talk? Your mommy or daddy?” Mrs. Balfour asked.

  “My mom’s dead,” Mary said. She did not turn from making her careful selections from the heaped cookie trays.

  "I'm sorry." Mrs. Balfour blanched behind her smile. Damn it; she should have remembered that. Where was her head this morning?

  “It’s okay,” Mary said and plucked a sugar cookie with rainbow sprinkles from atop a stack.

  “What about your father? Didn’t he want to come in and tell us all about his work?”

  “He’s retired.”

  “Well, he could come into the class and tell us about the work he retired from. What did your daddy used to do?”

  “Do you really need to know that?” Mary said casually, without malice or discourtesy.

  “I suppose not,” Mrs. Balfour said, taken aback by the little girl’s level gaze. She was relieved to see the principal gesturing her over to speak to a clutch of parents on the other side of the gym.

  Gunny Leffertz said:

  “What goes around, comes around. Bet your ass on that.”

  60

  Dr. Jordan Roth, former master neurosurgeon of Huntsville, Alabama, was now Dr. Julian Hernandez running a pill mill in Plantation, Florida.

  His identity, license and practice were all legitimate on paper. By all appearances, he ran a clinic at the back end of a professional park that had seen better days. The park contained weight loss places and cosmetic dentists for the most part. His new practice catered to Hispanics, mostly Cuban. It was all bilingual and the doctor had become quite fluent himself.

  But Cubans do not like to visit doctors and resist taking any drugs prescribed to them. Consequently, Cubans tend to live longer.

  The doctor’s main clientele were shills sent to him with complaints of constant aches and chronic pains that required Schedule Three narcotics for relief. Jordan no longer exercised the invisible organ of his mind these days. Only his writing hand saw any action. The talented hand that once probed and repaired diseased and damaged brains now wrote prescriptions for a parade of deadbeats. These human debris resold these legal drugs for money to be used for the purchase of cheaper street drugs.

  The outfit that kept Dr. Roth in his practice bought these drugs back from his patients. The outfit, some Jamaicans out of Miami, then retailed the prescription grade drugs at many times their value to users who liked their dope pure.

  Just as these primo drugs were sold on, so was Jordan sold by the two men who held him. The two Russians from Tampa, the brute and the pop star
, exchanged Dr. Roth for a truckload of stolen laptops. The Jamaican posse set him up here in the clinic. They owned him now. And they did indeed own him in every sense of the word.

  The doctor was suspect number one in the murder of Marcia Roth. The case was a head scratcher for the Alabama state CID who took over the case. Mrs. Roth was found dead in the basement of their torched home with gunshot wounds to the head. The home was set ablaze, they theorized, to hide evidence of the crime. Following that, her husband, a renowned surgeon and local celebrity among the Huntsville elite, had disappeared from the face of the earth.

  A further mystery was the whereabouts of the doctor’s granddaughter who had been living with them at the time of the murder and fire. The little girl’s father had also disappeared but was cleared of the arson and murder charges. Levon Cade was seen on security video from a Wendy’s drive-through in Muscle Shoals, an hour’s drive west, at the time of Marcia Roth’s death.

  A pet theory among the detectives was that Cade abducted his daughter and took off for parts unknown. He and the Roths had been in a bitter custody battle for months. The educated guess was that Cade picked his kid up at school and headed west with her.

  Extrapolating on that, maybe the good doctor lost his shit over his son-in-law’s actions. The book on Roth was that he could be a real stiff prick if he didn’t get his way. One OR nurse had summed it up. “Surgeons.” Accompanied by an epic eye roll.

  So, the doc and his wife got in a fight over it and the doc blew her brains out.

  As a motive, it stunk up the place. It was all they had. The doctor had not touched their bank accounts or retirement portfolios. He didn't even take the family car. Just shot the missus, set the house on fire, and walked away into the ether. Maybe he wandered into the woods and blew his own brains out. Maybe some hunters or hikers would find his bones one fine day.