When he was a little boy, Lindemann Loud would walk the three blocks from his family home on Franklin Avenue - where he lived with his mother and several of his aunts for the first eight years of his life - to downtown Royal Woods. There wasn't much in a town as small as Royal Woods but there was a candy store that sold the sweetest, most tooth rotting shit this side of God's own dessert tray for dirt cheap. He was talking cakes and cookies for pennies on the dollar.
Needless to say, he spent a lot of time in there as a kid, going from one display to another with big, awestruck eyes, trying to decide if he should get taffy this time, or a donut, or a cupcake, oooh, or maybe an eclair. Eclairs rule. He was in there so often that he was on a first name basis with the owner and all the employees. In fact, he was in there so much that the owner once joked about Lindemann "Putting my kid through college." That was an exaggeration, sure, but Lindemann did spend a lot of his money in there.
Well, his Mom and Grandma's money.
It was never enough, though, because they'd cut him off after a while. If he wanted unrestrained access to all the cakes and crumpets his little boy ass could eat, he needed a job.
Like any enterprising and cash strapped boy of a certain age, Lindemann began to lend his muscle out to his neighbors. Need a lawn mowed? I'm your man. Need your gutters cleaned? You know who to call. Want someone to throw out all those dusty boxes you've had moldering in your attic since Bill Clinton was president? Lindemann is here.
Being the resident handyman up and down Franklin Avenue taught Lindemann a valuable lesson.
Work sucked.
No, no, like…it really sucked. He hated busting his ass for a relative few bucks here and there. Like that guy in that movie after swallowing the red pill (or was it the blue one?), his eyes were opened, and he quickly came to realize what a sham it all was. His mother worked overnights as a waitress at a truck stop diner for minimum wage. She was always broke, always tired, and could never afford anything either one of them needed or wanted. If it wasn't for his grandparents, they'd both be on the street with nothing. Not a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, as his great-grandfather Pop-Pop used to say. And his grandparents weren't doing all that great either. Grandpa owned a restaurant and worked his fingers to the bone every single day just to keep it, and his family, above water. He was barely forty-nine but looked like he was sixty, gray hair and fucked liverspots and shit. What the fuck? Was that was life was all about? Slaving until you were dead just to have a pocketful of pennies?
Man, fuck that.
Lindemann wanted something better.
And as fate would have it, he found it.
One of the people in the neighborhood whom he did work for was a little old lady named Mrs. Mangotta. She was eighty if she was a day and hunched over at the waist like her spine wouldn't work anymore. He mowed her lawn, cleared her gutters, and did other little odd jobs around her house, even long after he gave up doing it for other people. He felt bad for her so he kept on despite hating the work. Every so often, when he was working in her garden, her son, a guy about fifty, would show up. He was graying, pot-bellied, and always wore collared shirts and sunglasses. His name was Frankie and Mrs. Mangotta talked about him a lot. One day, while Lindemann was pushing a wheelbarrow through Mrs. Mangotta's backyard and sweating, Frankie came out. "I wanted to thank you for taking care of my mother," he said and slipped Lindemann a hundred dollar bill. "You do good work, I might want you around my place some day."
Hot shit, if you pay like this all the time, sign me up!
A few weeks later, Frankie came by while Lindemann was mowing the lawn and asked if he wanted to "help out" at the social club Frankie owned downtown. Later that afternoon, Frankie drove Lindemann in his oversized caddy to the Pals and Buds Social Club on Moral Street. It was housed in a little red brick building with white trim and hidden behind a screen of foliage. If you were just passing by, you might mistake it for a dentist's office or small, hometown reality company…if you noticed it at all. Inside was a large room crammed with tables and chairs like a bingo hall, a bar off to one side and booths along the opposite wall. A few old men played chess and a few younger guys sat at the bar. Frankie introduced Lindemann around. All the guys, he noted, had Italian last names and most had nicknames like Tony Hot Pockets, Carmine The Pimp, and Johnny Hats. They were also well dressed and wore expensive watches, chains, and pinkie rings.
Frankie had Lindemann serve trays of drinks and sweep up. The guys all treated him like a novelty, the way a pack of old ladies might a particularly cute baby, and each one tipped him: Ten bucks here, twenty there, an occasional fifty.
Lindemann was shocked by their generosity…and by their wealth. They all drove nice cars and lived in fancy houses on the rich side of town. A few of them lived in Detroit and commuted into Royal Woods "for work." Lindemann had no idea there were so many rich people in town.
Another thing he couldn't figure out: What did any of them actually do? Two summers running, he was at the Pals and Buds all day every day, and he never saw any of the guys lift a finger. They weren't doctors, they weren't lawyers, they weren't bankers.
What were they?
And how could Lindemann become one of them?
When he was nine, Lindemann and his mom moved into a trailer in the Pine Mills trailer park across town. Lindemann continued to do work for Frankie, and soon he was doing other odds jobs for him, jobs that didn't involve brooms and serving trays. Once a week, Frankie would send Lindemann around to various different businesses in town to pick up envelopes. All he had to do was walk in and say "I'm with Frankie," and the people there treated him like a god. One of the places was the candy store; he could walk in, take whatever he wanted, and the owner would just smile and tell him to enjoy.
It was freaking awesome.
As Lindemann grew older and wiser, it started to dawn on him what Frankie and his friends were. Lindemann never asked and Frankie never explicitly told him, so he was in the dark on the details, but they were mobsters. Had to be. He assumed they were part of the Detroit mob, but they could have been an outpost of another crime family - maybe one from New York or California. The envelopes Lindemann picked up were extortion payment and everyone treated him like a prince because they were scared shitless of Frankie. That made Lindemann feel bad, but the sense of power and respect more than made up for any lingering sense of guilt. It was almost as good as the money.
Almost.
Working for Frankie, Lindemann was bringing in at least 300 bucks a week, which was a lot for a kid his age. A lot of it went toward helping his mom pay the bills, but he always had some left over for fun stuff.
When he was twelve, Mom moved in with her old girlfriend Sam two towns over, and Lindemann stopped working for Frankie. Instantly, he went from rich af to broke as a joke. He never forgot those few wondrous years and how much cash he had. When he was thirteen, he decided that he wanted it back.
It began small. He'd rob vending machines for coins and mug other kids for their lunch money. Soon, he had met a bunch of other poor kids and they formed a street gang. Instead of tagging up turf and capping opps, they were focused on making money. Lindemann took what he had learned from the mafia - honor, respect, being low key and profit minded - and applied it to his gang. Their first major score came when they imposed a street tax on all criminals in the area. You couldn't do anything - sell a joint, rob a house, run an unsanctioned bingo game - without Lindemann and his Rammers getting a cut. If you didn't break them something off, they'd come by and "talk" to you. And what the fuck were you going to do about it? Go to the cops? Fuck you, you have an illegal dog fighting ring, you won't do shit.
The street tax brought in a couple grand a month. That wasn't very much, but split six ways, it was even less.
They needed more revenue.
Lindemann and his gang supplemented their street tax with mini hiests, GTA V style (God willing, GTA VI would be out sometime in 2041). He was admittedly too chicken shit to knock over a bank, since that would bring too much heat down on their heads, so they robbed smaller targets. One was the local library. Yeah, that sounds strange, but consider this: Not only do they have small amounts of cash on hand, they also have a mega fuck ton of computers. They stole every computer in the place and fenced them all for a grand total of 6k, a thousand per person. Not bad for a safe and easy score.
Slowly, they began to expand their operations to other areas, namely loansharking. Lindemann loaned out money to those in need, guys and gals who couldn't go to banks (gamblers, drug dealers) at steep interest rates. If his "clients" didn't pay up, he'd beat the shit out of them. He wouldn't kill them, though. Despite what might happen in the movies, loansharks do not typically murder wayward clients. I mean, if you do that, how are you going to get your money back? Lindemann was chickenshit when it came to the idea of killing someone. That was a line he did not want to cross. He realized, however, that in the life he was making for himself, he might find himself forced to do it.
Could he kill someone if the time came? Sure, he could kill someone in self-defense and not feel a thing about it, but clapping someone in a gunfight is far, far different from luring an unarmed and unsuspecting person into a dark corner and choking them with a strand of piano wire. Could he do it?
God, he hoped he never had to find out.
The closest he ever came was with a guy named Pete. Pete lived in a trailer park outside of town and had a problem with gambling. Also drinking, but mainly with gambling. Pete would borrow from Lindemann, blow his money at the track, and make excuses for why he couldn't pay on time. He always wound up forking over the cash, so Lindemann kept lending to him. One day, Pete came to Lindemann in tears saying that his six year old daughter had just been diagnosed with childhood cancer. Lindemann's mom and his stepmother Sam had just adopted an abused little girl named Allie and Lindemann was beginning to slip into the role of big brother. You could say that his paternal instincts had been jumpstarted, and hearing about a little kid getting cancer really fucked him up. He waived the 10,000 dollars that Pete owed him and wished him well.
But guess what.
Pete was lying.
His daughter didn't have cancer. That was just a lie to weasel out of having to pay back the money he owed.
Lindemann was furious.
He felt betrayed, manipulated, used. Pete had a savage beatdown coming as a matter of course - a loan shark can't just let someone fuck him over like that without making an example of them, it's bad for business - but for Lindemann, it was more personal than business.
After a week, he dropped by Pete's trailer. They were in the kitchen, talking, when Lindemann hauled off and hit him. The blow was so hard that it shattered Pete's nose and he went down in a heap. Lindemann wound up on top of him bashing his head into the floor over and over again. He was panting, seething, grunting like an animal. He realized that he was coming really close to crossing the line…and that scared him. He left Pete in a puddle of blood and broken teeth, and told him he had another 10,000 of those coming, one for every dollar he owed him. He wasn't really going to beat his ass 10,000 times, but he'd definitely do it again if he saw the son of a bitch on the street.
Pete wound up paying, and Lindemann cut him off. No more loans for you, prick.
By the time he was sixteen, Lindemann was making enough money from all of his revenue streams that he no longer felt the constant pressure to keep adding new profit sources to his and his gang's criminal enterprise. He wasn't Scarface rich, but he had enough that he never felt that clawing, claustrophobic sense of fear that poor people live with. In other words, he was good, and things, too, were good. All of his clients paid what they were supposed to (and on time) and Lindemann felt untouchable.
Then something happened.
He got pinched.
One of his extortion victims got tired of being squeezed every week and ratted to the cops. When Lindemann came by to pick up his weekly cut, they arrested them. Since he was so young, they charged him as a juvenile. The lawyer Grandma and Grandpa hired managed to get the charges reduced from extortion to petite theft, and he got away with six months house arrest and 120 hours of community service.
In the time he was gone, his other protection customers decided they were done with him. He still had money out on the street, but a lot of the people he lent to felt like they didn't have to pay him back now. In a few weeks time, his entire organization crashed and burned. When he got back into the game, he and his gang were just that - another fucking street gang with nothing going on. Instead of going after the people who fucked him over, Lindemann cut his losses. He made it to the top once, he could do it again.
The first thing new revenue source was drugs. He knew a guy who could get coke from Columbia easy as getting a can of Pepsi from the fridge. The only catch was: Coke ain't cheap. He bought small amounts and dealt it on the street, but he didn't have enough capital to purchase large quantities. If he could only get his hands on 10 or 20 grand, he could move mountains with that shit.
Snowy white mountains.
Around this time, Lindemann fell into his old extortion habits. He found out about an illegal card game held weekly in the back of a dive bar. He and a few of his gang went there one night and shook the place down. They made a couple thousand dollars - not much, but eh, good enough.
Then things went wrong.
Again.
A couple days after the incident, he was chilling at home when a knock came at the door. He answered it and found a big, swarthy Italian dude in a red tracksuit waiting for him. He looked vaguely familiar. "Hey, it's me, Tony Tits," the guy said, "remember me?"
"Oh, shit," Lindemann said, remembering, "what up, Tits?"
Tony was one of Frankie's guys.
"Eh," Tony said, "the usual." Here he grew serious. "Frankie wants to see you."
"I'm kind of busy, how about -"
"Now," Tony said firmly.
Lindemann knew that tone. This was serious. Sucking it up, he went with Tony, and they wound up at the Buds and Pals. Lindemann hadn't been back in years but it hadn't changed a bit. Inside, Frankie greeted him with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "It's good to see you," Frankie said and motioned him to sit at the bar. Lindemann looked around and noticed a few guys lurking around. His mouth went dry and he swallowed.
Was he about to be whacked?
He and Frankie sat down and Frankie ordered them some drinks. "I've been hearing a lot about you lately," Frankie said. "You had your own little crime wave up there." He laughed.
"Yeah, I guess I did," Lindemann said. "Then I got clipped and it all kinda…"
"It happens to the best," Frankie said. "When they started putting guys like Gotti and the Chin away, New York almost went bust, and they'd been around 70 years." The drinks arrived and Frankie took a sip of his. "You're a good kid, you did your time and didn't rat. It wasn't much of a sentence, just some house arrest bullshit, but still, a young guy like you standing up…that's impressive." He paused. "But we got a problem."
"What's that?" Lindemann asked.
"That card game you shook down…that's mine."
Frankie was expanding his rackets and the card game was one of his newest ventures.
Knowing a little bit about how the mob worked, Lindemann didn't argue, didn't make excuses, didn't even speak until Frankie was done. "Look, Frankie," he said genuinely, "I had no idea. If I knew, I never would have done it. I have nothing but love and respect for you. You've been good to me and I appreciate it. I promise you, I'll pay every cent of it back."
To his surprise - and his relief - Frankie waved him off. "Don't worry about it. Call it a…a gift."
"Are you sure?" Lindemann asked.
"Yeah," Frankie said. "The way you just handled this…you did it the right way and I respect that. If you tried to make excuses or something, I would have made you pay it back, but you didn't. You did it like a man and I like that."
Frankie made Lindemann an offer: Work under him. Lindemann would have to pay him a cut of his profits, but he'd get his full backing in return. Lindemann's mind raced as he weighed the pros and cons of such a relationship. "I know a lot of people," Frankie said, "I have a lot of friends, friends who can help you."
He didn't say it in as many words, but Frankie implied that he had local cops and politicians in his back pocket, and that he could resume his old rackets without fear of being arrested. In the underworld, having the protection of the mafia meant a lot. You also had access to almost limitless capital, which could fund your rackets. Lindemann instantly thought of his coke plug. With Frankie's money and power, he could move massive amounts of the stuff and make millions.
Lindemann thought it over for a moment, then made his decision. "That sounds great," he said.
Frankie smiled. "Good."
Now that he was officially with Frankie, Lindemann had to follow the same rules as any other mobster. He had to clear every new racket with him, he couldn't beat someone up (or kill them) without permission, and he had to make sure that his gang - who were now considered associated with the family - in line. That wouldn't be hard, his guys were all good people, but was responsible for everything they did now. If they fucked up, it was his ass on the line.
Traditionally, the mob was against drugs, mainly because stiff drug sentences inspired guys to cooperate with the feds for leniency. In reality, many, many, many mobsters were involved in the drug trade. It was too lucrative to pass up. He had never heard Frankie speak out against drugs and didn't know where he stood on the issue. He was afraid to bring it up at that first meeting, so he held off, figuring he'd work on establishing a good working relationship with him first. Once they were good, he'd float the idea.
With Frankie's backing, Lindemann returned to all his old haunts and started collecting protection payments again. As soon as they realized he was with Frankie, they rolled over easy. He also borrowed a couple grand from Frankie and put it out on the street in loans.
For a couple months, things were good, but they could have been better. Lindemann bided his time and waited for the day he could bring the issue of drugs up to Frankie. That day came four months after they began their working relationship. Lindemann brought Frankie's weekly cut to the Buds and Pals and stayed to show the old man his respect. They sat at the bar and chatted over a few drinks, Lindemann screwing up his courage. This was a risky proposition: Frankie might very well be upset over it, and it could strain their relationship.
Finally, Lindemann took a deep breath and made the plunge. "I know a guy we can make a lot of money with. I don't know if you'd be interested, though."
"What is it?" Frankie asked.
"Coke," Lindemann said. He told Frankie everything, and when he was done, he waited for the old mobster to render his verdict.
Frankie took a drink and seemed to mull the idea over. "How much do you need?" he finally asked.
"I'm not sure," Lindemann said, "I'd day ten grand to start with."
"Alright," Frankie said. "I happen to know a guy who can move a lot of that crap. You talk to your guy, I'll talk to mine, and we'll get something going on."
Lindemann smiled. "Awesome."
The next day, he met with his guy, a Mexican named Jorge. He said that if Lindemann could get ten grand to him, he'd have a wealth of coke with a street value in the thousands by the end of the week. Lindemann trusted Jorge but had to impress upon him that they were dealing with the mafia here. "If something goes wrong" - like if you stiff me, he thought but didn't add -"bad things are going to happen."
"I'm dealing with a cartel," Jorge said, "if something goes wrong, really bad things are going to happen."
Well, that was true. He hoped that Jorge having a cartel behind him and him having the mafia would prevent anything fucky from going down. Usually organized crime groups were fairly straight forward in their dealings. If they weren't, it'd be bad for business. That's why you never hear about mob families going to war. Since the mob as we know it started back in 1931, most, if not all, of the wars have been civil wars contained to one family. The Bananas War, the First and Second Columbo War - war hurts everyone's bottom line, so it's in their best interest to find peaceful ways to resolve their issues. If anyone stiffed Lindemann over, it would be Jorge himself. Anyone higher up the chain of command would know better than to fuck around. If they promised coke, there would be coke, all Lindemann had to do was hold up his end of the deal and bring the cash.
He went back to Frankie and told him it was all set up. "I just need the money."
Frankie gave it to him, and a few days later, Lindemann met Jorge in a garage he owned on the west side of town. The coke was in five metal suitcases, and when Lindemann tasted it, his tongue went instantly numb. He didn't do coke himself, but he could tell that this was good shit. After paying Jorge, Lindemann went to see Frankie; Frankie had asked that he drop by immediately following the trade off. They met in the Buds and Pals, and Frankie told him what was up. He wanted to pass the drugs along to his guy, who had already agreed to take a look at it. Frankie wanted to sell the whole batch to him for thirty since he - Frankie's guy - had connections and could sell it at a premium.
"I'm gonna have you meet with him," Frankie said. "They call him Cowboy because that's what he acts like, a fucking cowboy. He knows what he's doing, though, and we can turn a real profit with him."
That nickname, Cowboy, made Lindemann nervous. In mob circles, "Cowboy" was what you called a loose cannon, someone who shot first and asked questions later, like a cowboy in an old RKO picture. Lindemann didn't want to deal with someone like that, someone unstable and unpredictable, but if the guy was working with Frankie, how bad could he really be? Frankie was a smart man and made damn sure to always look out for number one - his money. He wouldn't work with a nutcase or a ticking timebomb. At best, he'd tell the guy to fuck off. At worst, he'd have him killed and stuffed in the trunk of his car, figuring hey, it's better to be safe than sorry.
Anyway, Cowboy was with a branch of the family that operated across the border in Canada. He apparently had contacts in the film and music industry. "He sells most of his stuff to coked out celebrities and makes a killing ripping them off." Frankie rasped laughter.
From everything Frankie said, Cowboy could help them make a shit load of money. Once Lindemann got a steady supply moving from Jorge's people, they could basically print their own money. Any nerves or misgivings he may have felt were washed away by the prospect of easy money flowing in. Even after Frankie took his cut - which would be half or maybe even more - Lindemann would have enough money to give each of his guys a generous piece and still keep a metric ass load for himself.
Frankie set the meeting up for that Friday, and on the appointed day, Lindemann and one of his guys, a big, bald Native American named Duke, drove into Canada. Their destination was a junkyard on the edge of a mid-sized city called London about 175 miles west of Toronto. Lindemann was kind of hoping he'd get to see Toronto itself. From the pictures he'd seen, it looked basically like Canada's version of New York City.
The junkyard covered nearly fifty acres of prime real estate south of town; teetering mounds of junk and wrecked cars stacked fifty feet high towered over the maze-like warrens worming their way through the cluttered landscape. Duke, who was driving, pulled into the center of the lot, and stopped in front of a black town car. Three men were waiting, standing all in a line. The ones on either end were big and muscular, while the one in the middle was short and wiery. With his beady eyes and long face, he reminded Lindemann of a rodent. A weasel, maybe, or a ferret.
Duke parked the car and they got out, walked up to the men. A big, almost goofy grin spread across the face of the man in the middle. He could only be Cowboy, Lindemann thought. "Alright, there he is," Cowboy said. "You're Frankie's guy, right? He said a lot about you. You got the stuff?"
Lindemann held up one of the suitcases. "The rest are in the car."
Cowboy sniffed. "Let me try it."
One of the goons took the case and opened it. Cowboy took out a baggie of white powder, made a tiny slit with a knife, and dug some out. He held the blade up to his nose and sniffed. Instantly, his head whipped back and he stumbled as if hit. "Holy shit," he said, "whew! That's what I call a spicy fucking meatball." He tittered laughter and wiped his nose. Lindemann got the impression that Cowboy knew a lot about good coke…because he often did it. Hell, if Lindemann was a betting man, he'd say the mafioso was high as fuck before they even got here. "Fuck, this is good shit," Cowboy said. "I'll take it."
Duke and Lindemann grabbed the rest of the suitcases and swapped them out for Cowboy's own suitcases of money. "Talk to your people," Cowboy said. "This is good shit and I can move it quick." He patted Lindemann's chest. "We're gonna get rich together, just you wait. You're gonna have boats and shit. They're gonna make fucking documentaries about us when we're dead. We'll make that Escobar motherfucker look like a fucking priest."
Lindemann grinned. "We'll be in touch."
One of the goons spoke up then, doing his best to sound tough. "Just don't fuck us over."
A dark shadow flickered across Cowboy's face and he turned to him. "What?" he demanded.
The goon seemed to realize he had made a mistake. "I was just saying…"
"You're saying you don't trust them," Cowboy supplied. "You're casting doubt on them. I'm trying to build a fucking report here and you're trying to fuck it up behind me."
"No, I -"
Cowboy hauled off and slapped the goon across the back of his head. He staggered but didn't do anything back. "This thing's built on trust and respect, and what you just said was really fucking disrespectful. Apologize."
The goon looked at Lindemann and opened his mouth, but Cowboy cut him off. "On your knees. Do it on your knees."
For a second the goon hesitated, then got down on his knees. "I'm really sorry. I didn't mean it like that."
Lindemann was suddenly uncomfortable. "It's fine," Lindemann said. "It's no problem."
"Now suck his dick," Cowboy said.
It got so quiet you could hear a pin drop. "His…?"
"Do it," Cowboy ordered, "eat his fucking cock right here. Kid…whip it out. I'm dead serious."
Lindemann held up his hands. "Whoa, hey, no, really, it's not a big deal. I'm not offended."
The goon looked like he was going to start crying. "I don't want -"
Cowboy slapped him again. "I don't care what you want. You're lucky he thinks you're an ugly faggot with monkeypox, 'cause if he wanted his dick sucked, you'd do it or you'd die. You understand me?"
"Yes, sir," the goon nodded.
"Good. Now put my money in the car."
Head down, the goon took all of the suitcases and put them into the car. As soon as they could get away, Duke and Lindemann got the hell out of there. "Can you believe that shit?" Lindemann asked in the car. He didn't know whether to laugh or be appalled.
"He's crazy," Duke said simply. "You better watch him."
"Coke will do that to you," Lindemann said charitably.
"Still," Duke said. "I don't like him. You can't trust a junkie."
While he was right, Cowboy was with Frankie, so he couldn't be all that bad. He might be a little over the top, as evidenced by his actions back at the junkyard, but Lindemann was sure that he could trust him. Frankie wouldn't work with a dud.
Over the next several months, Lindemann worked hard to get a stream flowing between Jorge and Cowboy. Every month, he and Frankie would buy a shipment and then Lindemann and Duke would take it across the border. Each delivery was larger than the last, and every time they met with Cowboy, he asked for more. His eyes were always wide and blood shot, and his nostrils were pink and chaffed. His movements were somehow both tense and loose at the same time, and he talked a mile a minute. Lindemann suspected that he was using some of the product himself, but if so, he was paying for it and not stiffing him on money, so whatever. Enjoy.
He should have been disturbed by Cowboy's increasingly erratic behavior, but he had allowed himself to lapse into a false sense of security. One time, Cowboy went off on one of his guys for breathing too loud, and another time, he paced back and forth, talking so fast that he stumbled over his words. That day, he asked for more product but claim that there was a snag in his supply chain or something and that he wouldn't be able to pay the whole amount up front. "I'll hit you extra on the back end," he said.
Lindemann asked Frankie, and Frankie cleared it, so Lindemann did it. After all, Cowboy would owe Frankie, not him.
One day in late January, Frankie notified him that Cowboy wanted an extra shipment. "I just gave him one last week," Lindemann said.
"He wants another," Frankie said simply.
"Has he paid you for the last one?"
Frankie hesitated. "He's working on it. He's paying interest so it's all good." He flashed a toothy smile.
Okay then.
Deep down, on some subconscious level, he must have had a bad feeling, because he asked his gang to accompany him. There was Duke, Jason, Lane, and Jake, the inner circle, the guys who'd been with him since the beginning. Those bad feelings in his subconscious were strong enough that he made sure he had extra hands on deck, but not so strong that he didn't being along his adopted sister Allie.
He and Allie had become close in the two years since Mom and Sam adopted her. She was almost thirteen and loved hanging out with him and his gang, though to her they weren't a gang at all, they were an extended family. Allie was afraid of Lindemann when she first came to live with them, like a skittish dog who's been kicked by everyone who's ever crossed its path. She came around, however, and really looked up to him as a big brother. Lindemann took his role of brother and protector very seriously and did his best to shield Allie from the life he led. He wouldn't have brought her along but she overheard him talking to Jason and Duke about going up to Canada and begged him to let her come with. At first, he told her no, but she gave him those big puppy dog eyes she was so good at, and there was no way he could deny her.
They all piled into the car and made the trip northeast, crossing into Canada over an ice choked river. The sky was flat and gun metal gray, and biting gusts of wind sent swirls of snow dancing across the pavement like restless spirits. Duke pulled into the junkyard and slowed. A thin layer of snow coated the heaps of twisted metal flanking the path and more fell lazily from the sky. Lindemann reached into his jacket and stroked the 9mm he always carried. It was an unconscious action inspired, perhaps, by something in the air. An animal can sense danger, and so too can a man. If he felt anything, however, he was not overtly aware of it.
Duke navigated the car through the maze of paths to the center of the junkyard. There were fresh tire tracks in the snow, so Lindemann assumed that Cowboy and his people were already here.
Sure enough, his black Lincoln - which he had bought with the profits of their recent venture, Lindemann presumed - was parked in its normal spot. Duke cut the engine and they all got out into a blast of chilly wind. Cowboy and his two goons walked up, and Lindemann and his people met them. Allie was standing next to him, looking around at the heaps of junked cars with wide eyes. "Whoa, look, a helicopter," she sad. Indeed, a helicopter with no rotor sat atop one of the mounds, its tail jutting out like a withered arm. "You got the stuff?" Cowboy asked. He sniffed deeply and rubbed his nose. His nostrils were pink and puffy, like he'd been doing too much coke.
Lindemann's skin began to inexplicably crawl. He looked around and noticed something strange.
Sets of footprints led into the heaps of junk, as though someone had walked over and then scaled them like mountain climbers. Lindemann's brow furrowed and his hackles raised. He lifted his head and scanned the mounds, stopping when he caught a glint, winking like a flash of light. For a split second, he had no idea what it was.
Then he saw it.
A guy with a rifle.
They were being ambushed.
Lindemann cried out a warning just as the whipcrack of a report filled the day. Duke turned, and a round slammed into his arm, knocking him down. Acting on reflex, Lindemann shoved Allie behind a junk car and followed. Suddenly, gunshots rang out from both sides as Jason, Jake, and Lane returned fire. One of Cowboy's goons flew back, and the other ducked behind a heap of scrap metal. Cowboy, gun in hand, dove behind an overturned refrigerator. Lindemann took out his gun and did his best to cover Allie with his body. Jake, Lane, and Jason crouched around the car they had all come in, using it for cover, and Duke scuttled away on his hands and knees, loedging himself into a crevice at the base of one of the mounds.
Bullets pinked off of metal and Lindemann scanned the high points, spotting two guys, one on either side. Cowboy shouted out orders and his surviving goon broke from cover. Lindemann leaned around the junk car and fired, hitting a glancing blow. He sprawled in the snow and army crawled to safety. A bullet hit the ground next to Lindemann and he withdrew back to cover. Allie was crying and shaking, and he tried to comfort her. "It's okay," he said, "calm down, we're gonna be fine, I promise."
A strange and penetrating silence fell over the junkyard. Cowboy shattered it. "Gimme the drugs and you can go!" he called out. "That's all I want!"
Seconds later, a shot rang out and a guy fell from the top of one of the mounds, his arms and legs thrashing and a long scream trailing behind him. He hit the ground with a thud and Jason yelled out, "I got him!"
Another volley of fire answered back. There were at least three guys still in the mounds. Lindemann counted the shots, noticing four or five different caliber weapons, and weighed his options. If Cowboy was serious, he would give the drugs up in a heartbeat, but Lindemann knew he was lying. There was no way he'd leave them alive. The moment they went back to Frankie with this, Cowboy was dead. He wasn't about to die over some fucking coke, though. Fuck that and fuck Frankie's money.
Lane broke from cover and ran over, bullets kicking up puffs of snow around him. Jake and Jason provided covering fire and the shots stopped. He huddled next to Lindemann and caught his breath. "What do we do?" he asked.
Lindemann thought for a moment. He wanted to stay and fight, not to protect the drugs but to handle this once and for all. If he didn't, Cowboy and his crew his come after him. He had Allie to think of, though. He couldn't risk her getting hurt.
"We're gonna dip," he said, "there's a truck stop across the street, if we get there, we'll be good. Let them have the coke."
Lane nodded.
He rushed back over to tell the others what was up. They signaled to Duke, and he crawled over while they laid down suppressing fire. When he reached them, they crawled over to Lindemann one by one. Bullets struck the ground but missed them. "Alright," Lindemann said, "we go back the way we came."
Moving at a crouch, they scurried away from the car. They rounded a corner, got to their feet, and hurried back the way they came, forming a tight group with Allie in the middle. Lindemann heard shouts behind them and kept his eye on the corner, walking backwards. As expected, a guy ran around it. Lindemann aimed and fired center mass. The bullet hit him in the chest and spun him around. Ahead, another guy ran out of a connecting path. He didn't look like he was ready to meet them, perhaps took a wrong turn. Duke grabbed him by the throat and shoved him against a car. The guy's face turned purple and he thrashed violently, then went limp. As soon as he was passed out, Duke tossed him aside and took his gun.
To throw off their pursuers, they went left between heaps of construction materials. They hung a right, then another left, coming to the fence. They moved along it looking for a hole. When they couldn't find one, Duke kicked out a few of the wood planks along the ground, forming a jagged hole. They crawled through one at a time. A hill sloped up to the highway and beyond, the truck stop glowed in the semi-darkness like a ship at sea.
They crossed the highway and went inside. Jason took Duke to the bathroom to check his wounds and the others waited in the diner while Lindemann called Frankie. The Lincoln came out of the junkyard and turned right, disappearing. Another car appeared and hurtled across the highway at an angle, barreling straight for the diner. Lindemann shoved Allie into Lane's arms and told them to run.
Seconds later, the car smashed into the front of the diner, glass shattering, metal twisting. A booth flew past Lindemann's head and landed behind the counter. Two guys got out and started spraying with Uzis. Lindemann flipped a table over and crouched behind it. Where was Jake?
Just then, Jake crawled out of a pile of wreckage to one side of the car. He sneaked up behind one of the guys and snapped his neck, giving Lindemann enough time to pop up and fire at the other one. The bullet tore out his throat in a spurt of blood and he sank to his knees, eyes white and face rapidly paling. "Come on," Lindemann yelled.
By the time the police showed up, they were gone. They reached a strip mall and Lindemann called Frankie again. "What was all that fucking noise?" Frankie asked.
"Cowboy," he said.
He told him what had happened, speaking in code in case the feds were listening, and Frankie grew grave. "I'm sending someone to get you, just hang on."
Lindemann expected Cowboy to make another attack but he never did. Fifteen minutes later, a couple guys with the Canadian mob showed up and whisked them back to the states. Lindemann half expected them to be in league with Cowboy, but they weren't.
It was over.
Allie had fallen asleep in his lap and he absently stroked her hair as he plotted his revenge.
After hearing the news, Frankie had a sit down with the boss of the family, where he asked for permission to kill Cowboy.
Permission was granted.
Finding Cowboy proved harder than Frankie imagined. Cowboy had gone totally off the deep end with his coke addiction and snorted up most of the product, which is why he ambushed Lindemann and his gang. He wasn't selling very much and didn't have the money to pay. He knew what was coming and went ghost, dropping from sight. It was three months before Frankie tracked him to Vancouver.
He sent a hit team to take care of him.
At his request, Lindemann went with them. They tracked him to a crumbling tenement and watched him for almost a week before snatching him off the street. They took him to a warehouse on the water and the hit squad beat him savagely. Lindemann never knew if he could cross the line, but that day he found out that he could: He was the one to shoot Cowboy in the back of his head.
When the junkie was dead, the other guys shoved baggies of coke down his throat and up his ass to send a message: He was being killed for being a greedy ass junkie. They dumped his body in a city park for someone to find and then went back to the states.
It was over, but the things Lindemann had learned about himself - such as his capacity to kill and the fact that he felt no remorse - would stay with him for many years to come.
THE END