Chapter 4

“Automatica Kalashnikova,” Irina Komarov said. She stroked her manicured finger slowly back and forth on the oily barrel of the AK-47. “You like?”

“I like,” Steep Ride LaRue said.

Irina fucked him up. But then a six foot tall Russian beauty queen in spiked Manolo Blahniks and a body hugging black Armani pants suit, ivory blonde hair swept up in a beehive straight out of the 50s, would fuck up any one, especially a Lake City gang banger with a 95 IQ. It doesn’t take much IQ to pull the trigger on a drive by, which was Steep Ride’s specialty. The AK was his tool of choice, folding stock only, handy for getting in and out of the car.

“How you say that shit?” Steep Ride said.

“Automatica Kalashnikovaaaaaa,” Irina drew the words out. She handed him the weapon, incongruous in her manicured hands, the fingers long and white and clean, like bone. Steep Ride worked the action, shouldered the Kalash, scanned left and right, then folded the stock down. He took a bungee cord out of his Dickie’s jacket pocket, hooked the loops through the metal stock where it folded under, then looped his strong arm through the bungee cord and thrust the rifle out. The taut cord at full extension held the rifle almost as steady as shouldering the stock would.

“Yeah, this my bitch,” he said. Challenged her with his eyes, looked her up and down the black pant suit that clung to the long muscles of her body.

“And that’s mine,” Sergey Komarov said from behind him.

Steep Ride laughed, turned slowly and looked at the bulky Russian standing behind him, immaculate in a tailored suit. “Just playing, Sergey.”

“How many units today, my friend?” Sergey said.

“Ten.”

“Cash and carry? As usual?”

“That be the way I do bidness.”

“And that’s the way we do ‘bidness’, my friend,” Sergey said. “$900 per, correct? That is what we agreed on?”

“$9K. That’s right.” Steep Ride reached into his inner pocket, paused with a knowing smile at Sergey, slowly pulled out a bulky envelope and tossed it to the Russian. “You want to count?”

“Always,” Sergey said. “It avoids misunderstandings, don’t you find?”

Sergey took his time flipping through the bundles of bills squeezed into the envelope, nodded, smiled.

“Do you need some help loading?” he said.

“I gots my boy,” Steep Ride said.

“Then shall we?” Irina said.

Steep Ride let his new AK slip off his shoulder into his hand, extended the stock, slipped it back into the oilcloth packing sheath and placed it on the table with the other rifles. He took a cell phone out and pushed the radio talk button and said, “We ready.”

The door opened and a tall slim black man dressed in a loose fitting hoodie and sweat pants slouched in. Sunglasses and the close drawn hood buried his face. Without a word, he gathered up an armful of sheathed rifles and went out, returned a moment later to get the rest.

“Good doing ‘bidness’ with you all,” Steep Ride said.

“Any time, my friend. We look forward to seeing you again,” Sergey said.

Steep Ride stood and looked Irina up and down, then at Sergey. “I be looking forward to seeing someone. Later.”

He gave them his back and swaggered to the door.

Irina turned and smiled at Sergey.

“When it’s time,” she said. “I want to kill him.”

“As you like,” Sergey said.

Her blue eyes gleamed with delight. She skinned her lips back. Her front incisors were crooked, one just slightly discolored.

“I like.”

***

“That’s their warehouse,” Deon whispered to me. “And that’s one of their regular customers.”

I was flat on my stomach. I braced my elbows so the night vision binoculars wouldn’t wobble. The bulky black man in the Dickies jacket paused beside the Cadillac Escalade and asked his companion in the hooded sweatshirt something I couldn’t hear.

“What did he say?” I said.

Deon whispered without shifting his grip on his parabolic mike, “We gots what we want.”

“I guess so,” I said.

“How many you reckon?”

“Ten. Pretty sure it was ten.”

“You doing business with these people?”

“Will be, oke. Will be.”

“Why?”

“They’ve got good sources for the hard to get, oke.”

“Like?”

“Like those full auto AKs they walked out of there.”

I laughed. “Oh, hell yeah. Just straight up security, right?”

Deon smiled. “I never lie to you, Jimmy.”

This is how it goes down: you never do a deal without a recon first. Check the players out, know the ways in and out of the meet -- the front doors, the back doors, the fire exits, the places where if it went to shit you could drive a car right through the wall, where the shooters would hide -- then we’d know where we’d put our shooters, cover the meet under our long guns, bring the deep serious heavy shit down on them when -- and if -- we decided to do it. Lurk in the bushes, watch how they do business, keep track, look for any changes.

Then you set up the meet so that everything is stacked on your side.

That’s the only way you last long enough in this business to get gray hair, which was something I aspired to.

So while Deon toted enough hardware to equip a 3^rd world army, he still needed a set of eyes with a skill set to watch his back.

That would be me.

Security.

Especially with Russian arms dealers.

The Komarovs had a rep. Nothing flashy, nothing dramatic. Just if you fucked with them, you disappeared. Not right away, though I’d heard that someone had once tried something dramatic. Sergey Komarov showed that individual something dramatic from his whispered about military service in the old Soviet Union Army Special Forces, the Spesnatz.

Or so I’d heard.

But in the regular course of business, you’d just…disappear.

One of the disaparacidos, as my Argentinian friends would say.

The Komarovs were people to be dealt with cautiously, with respect, even if you were a known player like Deon.

And that’s just what we were going to do.

Since we were going to steal from them.

 

 

Interlude

There is no honor among criminals.

That’s a romantic notion drawn from noir novels and Hollywood movies.

Edge dwellers, for the most part, think only of themselves, and, sometimes, their closest friends and families.

But the truth is that most would sell out their friends and families in an instant if it came down to that “me or them” moment.

Some like to comfort themselves with the illusion that they’d never roll over, never give up their friends -- and there were some, not many, but some, that would stick to that. Most of them were more motivated by fear than honor, though…fear of reprisal, against them or their families, fear of what might happen to them inside if they were known as rats.

The edge dwellers live in a world where strength, measured by the ability to do harm to others, was the prime virtue. Honor was a fantasy indulged in comic books and movies.

The ones with honor were dangerous.

The ones who lived by a code were even more dangerous.

The other might mock them, maybe even, if they had the guts, to their faces. But whether they acknowledged it or not, there was a grudging respect, often anchored to a deep resentment, because in their encounters with those who held on to a concept of honor and a code, they had to look at themselves.

And where they fell short.