Bullet River (The Garbage Collector 2) (5 page)

Their matching two-pound eyebrows furrowed in unison.

“The fuck’s that supposed to mean?” the second guy said.

I acted a little scared. “Whoa, whoa, no offense meant. You guys seem like legitimate businessmen. I mean, that Town Car is bitchin’.”

They looked at me, trying to decide if I was fucking with them.

“However, I’ve got another guy coming to give me an estimate.” I glanced at my watch. “In fact, he should be here in about ten minutes. Do you want to leave me a card?”

The second guy looked at the first. I could tell what he was silently asking. He wanted permission to kick the shit out of me, or at least create enough pain and fear to result in a nice big check.

The first guy looked up at the house. There was a little security camera over the rear of the house.

“You’ve got our number,” he said.

They turned and got back into the Lincoln.

They backed down the driveway and when I heard their tires squeal on Broadway, I jumped into my rental, roared down the driveway and out, just in time to see them turning onto Highway 41 North.

•

I knew where they were going before they got there.

Fort Myers.

More accurately, North Fort Myers.

It only made sense. There were three strip clubs in the entire area. From Fort Myers south to Naples. The best was Angel Station, second best Candy Assets. The third one, Real Dolls, was out in the boondocks. I know, I checked it out. And it was unpleasant, to say the least. Most likely a front for a biker meth lab.

These guys pulled into the parking lot of Candy Assets.

It made sense the Albanians had control of at least one of the strip clubs in the area. Hell, they might have all three.

I parked on a side street and went inside.

The place was cheese incarnate.

They had tried to re-create some kind of candy store decorations, but it mostly amounted to a bunch of photographs of women licking lollipops

So creative.

I took a seat at the bar.

“I’ll take a Heineken, please,” I said to the bartender. She was a tall redhead with an apron that parted down the back to show off a silver thong between two bright-white ass cheeks.

“Seven dollars,” she said.

I pushed a ten across the bar. “All set,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said without emotion and walked down to the end of the bar. Not gonna lie; I watched her the whole way.

I considered what my best plan would be, and then the solution presented itself.

Her name was Java. She was dark-skinned (again, the creativity!), probably Native American, and she wasn’t young. Her boobs were small and obviously real, which meant for a stripper her age that she either had ethics or not enough cash for the procedure.

If it were for ethical reasons, my plan wouldn’t work.

If, however, it had to do with a financial issue, I might have a temporary employee sitting next to me.

I pulled out a fifty and told her what I wanted her to do.

She said, “Easy money. I like it.”

•

The two men were reflected in the mirror behind the bar. I took a long drink of beer, then turned with a look of irritation on my face.

“Awfully tough to see tits and ass with you two standing there,” I said. “Actually, I
do
see asses. Two of them.”

They were both big, thick thugs. Heavy arms and foreheads the size of toasters.

“A girl said you were harassing her,” the one closest to me said.

“So fucking what?” I said. I loved playing an unruly customer. It was my favorite role. “Isn’t that what they’re here for, douche bag?”

“No, that’s not why they’re here,” the second one said. “I think maybe you should step outside, sir.”

“You know what, asshole?” I said. “If Fama tells me to leave, I’ll leave. Until then, buy me a beer, or a lap dance, or just fuck right off.”

The redhead glanced over from the end of the bar. I waved her over.

“These two meatballs are buying me another Heineken,” I said.

They didn’t say anything to her, so she gave me one, with a slightly curious look on her face.

The thugs left, but one of them came back after a little more than half of my beer was gone.

He spoke.

“Mr. Fama would like a word with you, sir.”

It may have just been me, but his “sir” sounded a bit sarcastic.

9.

He sat behind a desk, an iPad in his hands.

I recognized him instantly. He was a short man, wide, with a beer belly and man titties. His face was the very definition of bulbous: big, thick lips and a blubbery nose. A heavy forehead that hung over his eyes like a bone visor.

“Do you have one of these?” he asked, tilting the iPad toward me.

“Nope,” I said.

“It’s the new one. Look at how nice this picture is,” he said.

He turned the screen to me. It was a video of a young girl having sex with three men at the same time.

For a brief moment, I wondered if it was Kiki. But it wasn’t.

“I can tell you don’t like this, even though you are pretending to not care,” he said, pointing at the video.

“How old is she?” I said.

“Old enough.”

The other two guys laughed at the boss’s joke.

I looked at Fama. I knew his first name was Bruno, and that I had last seen him about a year ago at a brothel in Detroit, from which I had pulled Kiki out at gunpoint. Bruno Fama hadn’t been in charge then, but he’d been present. So had his little brother, Darko.

“So you remember me?” Fama said. “Because I remember you. You cost us some money. Maybe you want to pay me back now. We take credit cards. Everything but American Express. Their merchant’s transaction tax is too much. Fuckin’ robbery if you ask me.”

“Don’t think so, Bruno,” I said.

He gave a half-shrug and an I-could-care-less smile.

“What is it they call you?” he said.

I just stared at him.

“The Garbage Collector, right? He laughed. “Maybe that is why you carry such a bad smell with you, no?”

The other guys laughed some more. No one is ever as funny as the boss. Just ask these guys.

“So why did you dump her in the river right across from me?”

“What on this Earth are you talking about?” he said. He put the iPad down on the desk again. The porn video was still playing.

“You’re just going to piss me off by lying,” I said.

He chuckled.

“You know,” he said. “After you stole one of our products back in Detroit, we put word out that we wanted to get to know you.”

I nodded.

“No one wanted to tell us anything,” he said. “But then a couple weeks ago, some friends of yours—lawyers, I believe—called me and said they’d heard a rumor you were in my neighborhood. They suggested I give you a gift, sort of like a . . . what do they call it . . . a Welcome Wagon?”

He picked up the iPad again and started tapping on the screen.

“We already knew how much you liked Kiki,” he said. “In fact, your lawyer friends said they’d heard that you and Kiki had become very good friends after you abducted her.”

I shook my head, but it was the truth. I had made a mistake. Kiki’s relatives had asked me to deliver her to them, sober. I’d taken her to my place on Drummond Island and helped her kick the drugs. It became more than that, briefly, until I’d reunited her with her family. That was the last I’d seen her, until we’d met again. On the river.

Fama continued his story. “And since it was time for her to go, we were going to feed her to the crabs, but then someone had an idea. Maybe it was me. That we could turn her into . . . what do they call it? The gift that keeps on giving, right? And you
still
haven’t said thank you! So rude.”

This got a big laugh from the assholes.

I knew the only reason Fama was telling me this was because he planned to kill me.

I smiled at him.

Fama laughed. “I can see you cared about her. I don’t give a shit and two halves about these bitches. These girls aren’t people to me. They’re product.”

“I bet that’s not what you tell them, though, is it?” I said.

“Tell them? I don’t talk to them, you idiot.” He held up a finger. “But I do fuck them. I believe I fucked this girl you talk about. Crystal. Kiki. I break them in, make sure they can suck dick like nobody’s business, then I am done. It’s like a test drive. Kiki told me I was the best fuck she’d ever had.”

I’d had enough of Fama. But I knew this wasn’t the place. Still, I wanted to make sure he would come after me as soon as possible. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on him.

“So were you in the KLA, too?” I said, gesturing at the red double-eagle on his forearm.

He didn’t bother glancing down. He knew what I was referring to.

He also didn’t answer.

“I almost said the ‘army,’ but it wasn’t really an army, was it?” I asked. “Just a bunch of criminals running around, killing kids and raping young girls. Sort of like a training ground for Albanian scum.

I let out a big sigh.

“Guess some things never change,” I said.

To his credit, he kept his face still. His dark eyes were flat.

“Goodbye, Mr. Garbage Collector,” he said. But his voice had lost any trace of joviality.

“How are Darkie’s ribs, by the way?” I said. “That guy is a pussy. Just like every Fama I’ve ever met. You guys probably
want
to go to prison so you can take it up the ass every night.”

Fama got to his feet, and the two thugs moved toward me.

I didn’t bother waiting for a response.

“Thanks for the beer, guys,” I said to the thugs.

They didn’t try to stop me.

10.

One thing I learned during my housesitting stint: a river makes a lot of noise. Day or night, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, either the river itself is creating sound or something on the river is making noise. Maybe it’s an alligator. Or a snake. Or a fish.

In this part of the Estero River, odds are the sound is man-made.

A fisherman returning from a long day out on the Gulf. A late-night kayaker. Or a pontoon boat full of drunken retirees.

But it was simply the sound of an occasional bird call and the splash of a fish jumping that accompanied the arrival of my friends from Albania.

They had waited until after the club closed. By my estimation, it was around three in the morning. There was a slight cloud cover, just enough to mask any light from the stars.

I stood among the palmettos and scrub oak, next to the post that held the motion detector for the driveway. There were two posts and the installer hadn’t bothered to try to camouflage them.

I figured my late-night visitors had spotted them on their first trip to see me.

And I wasn’t wrong.

They parked the same car about ten feet from the detectors, shut the engine off, and got out.

They must have agreed on the best approach because they split off, one going to the right, the other going to the left.

Toward me.