the Viking Funeral (2001) (19 page)

Shane nodded.

"Okay, good... The Aruba duty-free zone stretches from Aruba across to South America, specifically to Caracas, Venezuela, which is, lo and behold..
. R
ight on the Colombian border. Leon's black marketeer has his smuggling business in a little border town out in the desert, called Maicao." Shane remembered that Maicao was one of the towns circled on the map he found in the noise abatement house on East Lannark Drive. Now everything's set up and ready to go." Jody continued, "Blackstone calls All-American Tobacco and says: 'Ship ten million dollars' worth of Virginia Fives to Aruba for the parallel market.'"

"Virginia Fives?"

"Yeah..
. T
op-quality Virginia tobacco. See, a lot of the product sold in South America is shit: Turkish leaves or stuff grown in the South American jungle. The top quality V-Five is what everybody wants. So now the guy at All-American says, 'Okay, we'll take a meeting.' Then Blackstone puts a sales distribution executive from All-American in touch with my L
. A
. bail bondsman, Leon, and they cut a deal. Still with me?"

"Yeah. The bondsman is making a deal with a major drug dealer in L
. A
. for cash. Then he makes a deal with All-American Tobacco to buy the cigarettes with the drug money, using this Swiss duty-free company, Blackstone, as the middle man."

"Exactly. You got a real knack for this. Hot Sauce. Okay, next, Papa Joe Mondragon, who is Blackstone's head of Latin American Ops, gets in touch with the Cali cartel leader in Colombia. Let's say it's the Bacca family. Papa Joe confirms the deal. The cash is then handed over to Leon, who picks it up in L
. A
. using a step van, because that much cash is bulky as hell. Leon takes it to a compliant bank, where he deposits it and wires it to one or two other U
. S
. banks, to wipe out the paper trail. Then he wires it to a numbered account in a bank in Aruba, where it's held and earmarked to go to All-American Tobacco to pay for the cigarettes when they finally arrive in Aruba. That gets both the cigarettes and the drug money to pay for them out of the U
. S
. and safely into the Aruba duty-free zone. You with me still?"

"Yeah.... Two bank transfers to throw off any suspicious bank examiner, and now the drug cash is in Aruba along with the smokes."

"Exactly. What makes this deal really sweet for the tobacco company is, normally AAT sells a case of cigarettes, which contains fifty cartons, for a base price of a hundred dollars in the legitimate market. But remember, they have to pay U
. S
. federal cigarette taxes, so that pushes their sales price per case up to three hundred dollars."

"The federal duty on a case of cigarettes is two hundred dollars?" Shane asked, surprised by the amount.

"Cigarette taxes are a bitch. Except on thi
s d
eal, these cigarettes are gonna be smuggled out of the duty-free zone, into Colombia, and All-American is never going to have to pay the taxes. But AAT sells them to Leon for three hundred dollars a case anyway, just as if the taxes were attached. So instead of making a hundred dollars a case on these smokes, they're actually making three hundred. A much, much better deal for All-American."

"So the parallel market in Colombia is way more profitable for them than the legitimate market."

Jody nodded. "Then the cigarettes are shipped by All-American to Aruba and smuggled into Colombia, where they're sold. Then my little schmendrik, Leon, collects the drug cash, which is in the Aruba bank, and wires All-American Tobacco their money. He also pays Blackstone, which takes a three percent cut. Leon gets his percentage. Then the cigarettes are sold in the Bacca cartel black
-
market malls in Colombia. That completes the circle, because once Bacca sells them, he gets his L
. A
. street cash back. The Cali cartel loses about forty percent from the original ten million for this laundry service, but he can now say he's a legitimate cigarette broker and claim his income without fear of prosecution. Everybody goes away rich and happy."

"You're shittin' me."

"That's what this little bald geek, Leon, was doing. And get this: Leon's end of the deal is thirty percent of the gross amount. Off that original ten million bucks, he would be making

three million. This little piece a'shit was doing better than the president of All-American."

"So what happened?"

"We picked him up, beat the snot outta him, and got him to introduce us to all his contacts..
. E
specially Jose Mondragon, who is head of Latin American Product Placement at Blackstone--the godfather, as far as all this is concerned. Papa Joe has to bless every deal, or AAT and the Colombian drug lords won't play."

"Why are you running the laundry? Why not just rip the drug dealers and take all the money?"

"That was my first plan, too, but if you rip these greaseballs, they'll never stop lookin' for you, and there's enough in this deal so our thirty percent is plenty."

He paused to let that sink in, then went on. "After we got Leon to duke us in with Papa Joe, we also got a list of Leon's contacts at all the other Fortune 500 companies he'd been dealing with. Once he told us all that, Leon didn't seem like such a critical element anymore, so we just took the business away from him and set him up with a six-foot hole and a bag of lye on Dead Man's Beach in Oxnard." Jody smiled. "If the tide changes, that beach is gonna spit up more bones than a Halloween horror flick. In the meantime, we're cutting our deal on those cigarettes tonight with Jose Mondragon and All-American Tobacco."

"Who's Lisa?"

"Lisa St. Marie. She's AAT's account exec on this deal. Bitch is a tough negotiator. She'll try and cut our percentage to improve All-American's take."

"But you can handle her, right?"

"Yep. Good-lookin' piece of trim, but she's cold as a polar bear's nuts. She's also something of a sport fucker and I'm told by those who've tried her out that she's a world-class lay. Just do me a favor: if you decide to haul her ashes, don't tell Victory. He's got a crush on her, and so far she won't give him any play."

Shane nodded his head. It was hard to believe that Fortune 500 companies would be engaged in this kind of criminal behavior, but he believed what Jody was telling him was true.

"So that's what we're doin', Hot Sauce. Only the deal we're cutting tonight's not for ten million dollars..
. I
t's for fifty."

"What's the split?" Shane asked.

"Thirty-three point five of the fifty million buys the cigarettes and goes to AAT, the other sixteen point five mil is commission. Three percent, or one point five mil, goes to Blackstone; thirty percent to us. Our end of this fifty million dollar deal comes to a cool fifteen mil. No taxes, no record of the deal..
. I
t's cash in a bag. After this is done, each of us is gonna get a little less than three million dollars apiece. David VanKirk gets a half a mil to fly the chopper."

Shane let out a low, long whistle.

"Now you can see why we crossed over; why Medwick, Shephard, and Hamilton had to disappear."

Shane said nothing.

"If I hadn't watched my little bail-writing shitball do this, I wouldn't've believed it myself. But it's for real, the payday of a lifetime, and as of now, you get Rod's share." Jody let out a long breath and smiled. "Welcome to the Vikings, Hot Sauce. And don't ever say I never gave ya nothin'."

Chapter
25.

EVERYBODY CALLED JOSE Mondragon "Papa Joe." Aside from the house at La Quinta, he also kept a villa at the Ritz-Carlton in Rancho Mirage, where he transacted his business. Tremaine Lane had security duty, but the rest of the Vikings left for the eight o'clock meeting at a little past six. They stopped on the way to pick up some food and new clothes, parking the motor home in a pay lot in Palm Desert. Then Jody doled out some money that Papa Joe had given him to buy the scruffy unit a more terrain-friendly wardrobe.

Shane wandered the shopping malls with
Jody, but eventually they split up and he found himself at Don Vincent's Store for Men, on North Palm Canyon Drive. He selected a lightweight blue blazer, gray slacks, and a pale-blue shirt with a white collar, along with new underwear, socks, and shoes; then he rolled up his old clothes and put them in the store bag. Shane was just coming out of the dressing room when he was stopped in his tracks by a rayon nightmare. Lounging in a nearby chair, dressed in a new shimmering mint-green shirt, which stretched ominously across his overdeveloped chest, was Victory Smith.

"Hey, Scully," the huge weight lifter said. "Two hours I been wandering in these stores buyin' stuff, but I ain't happy, man."

"It ain't easy bein' green."

"Rod was my home slice. He and I rolled up scumbags together for two years in SWAT. I loved that guy. Because of you, he got dusted, an' it's pissing me off."

"Whatta you want from me?" Shane asked, setting down his bag so that both hands were free while feeling the comforting weight of the automatic on his right ankle.

Smith saw him freeing up and smiled: "Hey, dickwad, I'm not gonna try for you in a Palm Desert men's store. Gimme a little credit here."

"I don't want any trouble. Why don't we put this behind us?"

Victory Smith pulled himself to his feet. He had dropped one of the crutches somewhere and was now using only one. He propped it under his left armpit and leaned on it casually. "You know where the abductor canal is?" he said lazily.

"North Michigan, up by Lake Erie."

"Keep the jokes comin', asshole." They glared at each other. "The abductor canal is in the mid-thigh. That's where your slug hit me. You'd be surprised how much really necessary stuff goes through the abductor canal: you got your deep femoral perforation artery--carries blood to your feet; your femoral nerves--fuck with them and they hurt like a bitch. Then y'got all the other abductor muscles--your abductor minimus and magnus; plus a lotta tendons and shit, too numerous to mention. After you shot me, this leg looked like a plate a'spilt spaghetti-- a fuckin' mess. Beyond that, my Beaner doctor musta got his license at the Tijuana School of Terminal Agony. How much of this is ever gonna work right again is anybody's guess."

"You trying to tell me something?"

"Just fillin' you in on what happened, Scully; what you did to me." He turned and hopped toward the door, then stopped and swung back. "I got one real bad habit. Even back on the job it kept getting me in trouble. Wanta guess what that was?"

"You fart in squad cars."

Smith ignored the remark. "I'd go outta my way to make things right. Didn't leave no negative balance on the books. Fuck with m
e a
n
'
you got some payback comin'. No exceptions, no reprieves.
"

"I'll consider myself warned.
"
"It's not a warning. Hot..
. S
auce,
"
stretching it out, making the nickname sound ridiculous. "No, sir, not a warning." "Then what?"

"A promise, a fact of life. Course, I gotta wait till I'm feeling a little stronger.... Couple a'days and I figure these stitches oughta hold. Then, after I see what's left a'my leg, I plan on givin' you my own Viking funeral..
. V
ery small event..
. J
ust you, me, Rod's ghost, some gasoline, and a match." He turned again and, using his one crutch, hobbled out of the store.

They all met back at the motor home at seven
-
thirty as agreed, but Smith was late. All of the Vikings except Shane were now dressed like breath mints. Jody had on a plain, light blue, spring-weight sport coat, aqua blue shirt and linen slacks, with a pair of two-tone brown
-
and-white shoes. He looked like a cartoon gangster. Even Lester Wood had shucked his Western garb in favor of tan slacks and a light-purple shirt. He had a new off-white linen jacket. The rough-out cowboy boots and aviator glasses were all that remained.

Jody studied Shane's conservative attire: "This is the Springs, Hot Sauce."

"I didn't realize we were supposed to dress like Disney characters."

"Where's Smith?" Jody grinned.

They heard the crutch poke-poking along on the sidewalk around the corner from them. Then the massive ex-cop limped into view, and stopped.

"Where you been?" Jody asked.

"Me an
'
Hot Sauce went shoppin' together."

Jody nodded, not registering the implausibility of that idea. "We gotta get up to Papa Joe's before eight. While I cut the deal with Lisa, you guys hang out by the pool and back me up. Papa Joe says there're only gonna be one or two other people from All-American Tobacco there, so this should only take half an hour. Then we'll find a bar and celebrate."

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel sat on twenty-four landscaped acres in the foothills of the Santa Rosa Mountains, overlooking the Cochella Valley. Jody drove the motor home to the front gate, gave Jose Mondragon's name, and was directed to the Palo Verde villa at the end of a road that skirted the hotel grounds. The view looked across Frank Sinatra Drive into the twinkling lights of Rancho Mirage. The Palo Verde villa, like everything else in Palm Springs, had sweeping arches and Spanish tile, all of it wrapped in flowering bougainvillea.