Page 39 of Drowning in the Deep
DAEMON
The sun set early in the fall. Through my binoculars, I could see rays of pink and gold filtering between the buildings. Outside of Zarnov’s deli, we’d had a fairly uneventful afternoon, but now that the streetlights were beginning to come on, it was time to get ready to go.
Under the cover of darkness, Leo’s men began to work, unloading container after container into the back of a white van. Mikel and I exchanged a wordless glance. How much fucking money did he have in there that they needed those kinds of tubs just to move it around? A fucking lot, that was for damn sure.
We were stationed in the back of the deli, but everyone else was ready to go, in their position, awaiting the word from me. Once the truck was loaded up, it would’ve been simple to swoop in and strike, but Zarnov had half a dozen men with machine guns hanging around just watching the loading operation unfold, so I held off, knowing my time was coming.
It took a couple of hours for all of the loads of cash to be moved into the truck. My intelligence hadn’t been able to tell me where he was taking the money, so I’d had to set things up so that it never had a chance to move too far from here, never out of my line of sight. With the back of the truck loaded, the machine gun-toting men got in as well. Four of them climbed into the back. The other two went in the front, with one of them driving.
We watched the van take off from behind the deli. As soon as I saw it beginning to wind its way through the maze of narrow streets and alleyways, I lifted my walkie-talkie and gave the order. Then, Mikel and I hurried to the truck we had waiting and hopped inside. We let the van go for a bit so as not to draw any attention to ourselves, but we knew it didn’t matter because as soon as shit started to go down, we’d be ready.
From a distance, we wound our way through the tight alleys, going around the unbelievable amount of cars parked along each side of the road. Even the van driver had to think this was unusual, but he continued, driving around them. I chuckled under my breath, noting how haphazardly the stolen cars and large dumpsters had been dropped practically in the middle of the road. Side streets and alleys were conveniently blocked to keep Leo’s thugs driving in the direction we needed them to go. If they got out of our sights, there’d be no recovery.
“This is it,” I murmured to Mikel as we approached the intersection I’d spotted earlier where an alley intersected the road with no warning. Sure enough, the moment after I’d spoken the words, a garbage truck came sailing out of the narrow alleyway right in front of the van. The squeal of tires and the smoky smell of burning rubber filled the air as the van driver tried his best to skid to a stop, but it was no use. He’d been going too fast, and my guys had impeccable timing.
The screech of metal twisting and glass shattering hit my ears as the van collided with the center of the garbage truck. The steel reinforcement of the garbage truck barely gave, whereas the van was smashed to hell in the front. Shouts from inside the van, some of pain, others of alarm rang out, but my guys were already pouring out of the buildings and side streets around us.
Just as the van shifted into reverse, attempting to limp away, Mikel brought the truck we were in to a halt across the road. I popped out of the passenger side with my trusty pistol in hand. The back door of the van burst open, and one lone gunman leaped out, his head bleeding profusely. He had his machine gun at the ready, but he was too disoriented from the wreck to actually take aim and shoot. It was spray and pray for him until I landed a single bullet in his forehead, much the same way Nico had gone down, and the guy dropped onto his back like a sack of flour tossed in a mill.
My guys quickly closed in on the van, ripping the remaining assholes out and sinking bullets into their brains so fast, most of them never saw it coming. Only one guy got a little shout out before he joined his colleagues in a pool of blood on the street.
After that, we hurriedly moved to unload the truck and toss the tubs of cash into the back of the trash truck. It only took us a few minutes to redo what had taken Leo’s men a good chunk of the afternoon. Motivation and a will to get the money and get the fuck out of there before the cops showed up was our driving force.
Once the money was loaded up, I told my men to move out, and they disappeared back into the shadows, swallowed up by the night, leaving nothing but the mess we’d made in their wake. I got back into the passenger side of Mikel’s truck, and we headed back to the warehouse to see what it was we’d managed to bring in. On our way out, Mikel ran over the poor son of a bitch who’d taken a bullet through the head in a failed attempt to keep us away from Leo’s money.
All the way to the warehouse, we followed behind the garbage truck. I wasn’t letting that money out of my sight, not until it was safely locked up where Leo and his pricks would never find it. Even if some of the residents of that part of town had seen us, they wouldn’t have known who had pulled the operation off, and Leo was too fucking stupid to suspect me. No, it would take him a few days to figure it out, at the very least. By then, I would’ve already moved on to my next phase of operations. And he’d likely be dead, not by my hand but by his own crew.
At the warehouse, Vin took charge of having the guys unload the tubs of money. I had a nice perimeter set up, plenty of my guys with heavy artillery ready to ward off anyone who might decide they wanted a piece. Unlike Leo’s assholes, these guys were loyal to me. I had no doubt they wouldn’t be keen on taking anything without my permission, but at the same time, I’d make sure everyone got a share.
Vin had the tubs piled up in the back room when I walked in. He pulled the lid off one of them and pulled out a wad of cash. It was neatly bundled into a rectangle, fastened together with plastic and wrappers. “Holy fuck. There’s got to be at least ten of these bundles in each container. How much cash is in each one of these?” he asked, holding the stack out.
“Give it here, and I’ll count it,” Mikel volunteered. Vin handed it over and then started counting the stacks of cash in each tub. We wouldn’t know for sure if each stack held the same amount of cash or what denomination the bills were unless we looked through all of it, but as Mikel and Dezzy started counting money at the table, I stood back, knowing it wouldn’t matter.
“How much do you think is here?” Vin asked me, rifling through the next tote.
“It doesn’t fucking matter how much it is,” I told him, sitting down at the end of the table as more tubs were brought into the room. “It’s not the amount of money that matters here. It’s what the money is for.”
“What do you mean?” Dezzy asked me, muttering some numbers under his breath. He lost count, swore, slammed the money down on the table, and started over.
I chuckled but kept my comments about him not being an accountant to myself. “The money is to pay his crew with,” I explained to them. “It’s his payroll. As you are well aware, crime is a cash business. But unlike our guys, Leo’s men aren’t loyal to him. It’s purely business with his guys. Money talks and bullshit walks. So the moment they find out he doesn’t have the cash to pay them, they’re going to eat him alive.”
Mikel set aside a stack of bills that was clearly making his counting easier to keep track of than whatever the hell Dezzy was trying to do. “So you’re saying that Leo’s men won’t stay loyal to him if he misses one fucking payment?”
“Except they’ll know it’s not just one payment,” I told him. “Look at all this cash. Leo’s broke now, and his guys are basically mercenary types, which is probably how Ma’s gotten them to support her in all of this to begin with. Whoever is willing to pay them the most money wins.”
I could’ve gone the other route and started making promises of more money to them, but this was cheaper and a lot more fucking fun. Plus, I wanted revenge on Leo for not backing me. Stealing his money was a wound he’d never recover from.
“So what do you anticipate will happen next?” Dezzy asked me, finally noting how our brother was stacking the money in piles of ten one-hundred-dollar bills and then stacking those on top of each other so that they made a T-pattern. That way, if he lost count, he only had to go back from ten, not whatever the hell Dezzy had gotten up to.
“I expect them to come after Leo,” I told them. None of them had asked me these questions before we’d pulled off the job. But unlike Leo’s men, my brothers and our crew were fiercely loyal to me. They trusted me implicitly. I told them to jump and they flew, unwilling to land until I gave the okay. I wouldn’t have to worry about anything like this on my end, but I was certain that Leo was going to be having a bad night and a bad tomorrow—until someone decided he was too weak to lead. Then, it wouldn’t matter anymore. Leo would be out of the picture—either dead or so powerless he might as well be dead—and I would be one giant step closer to officially taking over the syndicate.
“So… they’ll take Leo out, and then we don’t have to worry about him?” Vin asked, giving up on counting the money bundles and walking over to the table.
“That’s right,” I told him with a firm nod. “No one will follow a man who can’t protect their hard-won cash. He’ll either get the boot or someone will put a bullet in him. Either way, Ma will have one less supporter, and I think the deli will have a new owner shortly.”
I snickered as Mikel raised his fist for me to bump, which I promptly did.
Dezzy was still laughing under his breath as he asked. “What’s next, then? I know the wheels in your head are still spinning. We might’ve taken out Leo Zarnov, but that’s not the end of our problems.”
