Road Rules Online

Mike decided to skip the restaurant and eat in the bar.  Despite no appetite, he ordered a double-decker burger with a side of fries and a piece of cheesecake for dessert.  Much to his dismay, the restaurant was actually cleaner than the bar.  He decided to suck it up and drink the watery beer.

And sulked.

The barstool kept Mike’s back mercifully to the parking lot.  He didn’t want to watch that Winnebago shake while Stan did whatever to Cheryl for forty bucks.  Really, he wanted to get drunk.  That would be nice.  Polish off a nice bottle of Scotch and tell the world to go fuck itself.

Or fuck Cheryl if it had forty bucks on it for her.

Oh, wait.  Cheryl had retired, except for one last roll with Stan, to move to Florida.  That Mike couldn’t fault her for.

“Here’s to Florida,” he said aloud, raising his mug to no one.

“Florida,” said a woman’s voice with a sweet twang to it.

Mike turned on his stool to see…  Damn, she was gorgeous.  Black, about five-six or so, with sleek legs and…

“Sorry,” he said.  “I didn’t mean to stare.”

She leaned forward, propping her chin on her fist.  “Sugar, you can look all you want.  Anything else, we’ll have to talk about.”  She turned and stuck her chest out, her sports bra enhancing her natural assets nicely.  “I’ll have what he’s having.  And bring him another one.”  To Mike, she said, “Hi, my name is Cinnamon.  Did I hear you say something about Florida?”

“I know it’s Koradovich,” said Estevez.  “You know it’s Koradovich.  But that smug bastard won’t admit shit.”

Estevez sat with Robert Jordan, a black man with salt-and-pepper hair, at a diner not far from the Justice Center.  Estevez had eggs, bacon, and hash browns.  Jordan, pleading cholesterol, opted for oatmeal.

“So why give me the third degree?” said Jordan.  “My people had absolutely no chance to take the Chest.  We didn’t see it until Friday morning, and someone was with us the whole time.”

“How long we known each other?  Fifteen years?  Twenty?”

“Twenty-two.”

“And in all that time, haven’t I always given you the benefit of the doubt?”

“Well, sure, but…”

“Okay, then hear me out.  You did this for a long time.  You know we have to treat everyone involved as a suspect until we learn otherwise.  Right?”

“Yeah.”

“And that Father Petrelli…  Boy, this new bishop’s got some real bastards around him.  He wants me to investigate you fully.  Had me pull all your Internal Investigation records.”

“That’s supposed to be illegal.”

“The Bishop of Cleveland has as much clout as any CEO or politician in this town.”

“So he knows about…”

“Yeah.  Or he will soon enough.”

“So now what?”

“Well, I have to ask this.  And I haven’t asked because, frankly, I know you’re good people.  Hell, we rode together for five years.”

“Then ask.”

“Is anyone at Jordan & Associates pissed off at you?  Anyone get passed over for promotion, a raise, a plum assignment?  What?”

Jordan steepled his fingers in front of his face.  “Not that I know of.”

“Come on, Bob.  You’re hiding something.  I can tell.  Give.”

“Okay.  My niece, Sharon.  I hired her on when she quit her job with that insurance company out in Mayfield.”

“Go on.”

“She’s good at claims work, but surveillance…”  He shook his head.  “We had this client in Little Italy, right?  He’s a car dealer like Koradovich.  Anyway, heclaims to be having problems with vandals.  Of course, he hasn’t filed any vandalism reports to the police.  He does, however, do a lot of under-the-table business with Andre Koradovich.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning the two are degenerate gamblers, only Koradovich cheats better.  Still, this guy stuck to his vandalism story, and we had no real reason to question it.  So we put people on his place overnight for a week to see if we could catch anyone in the act.”

“And Sharon?”

“You know how women don’t like to use the coffee can on surveillance?  She drove off to a nearby gas station.  When she got back, the Caddie was headed down the street and out of sight.  She lost it on the freeway.”

“Man.”

“Yeah.  Fifth time she’d blown surveillance since she started.  This was her last chance.  I let her go.”

Estevez flagged the waitress for some more coffee.  “So let’s talk to her.  Get her story, and eliminate her from the suspect list.  It’ll make Petrelli happy.”

“Can’t,” said Jordan.  “When I fired her, she gave back her company cell phone.  I’ve tried calling her at home since then, but she won’t answer her phone.  Not since Thursday morning, anyway.”

“Where’d she go?”

“Hell if I know.”

Sharon had been ready to get off the highway and turn around outside of Parkersburg, West Virginia, when she found them again.  The big Caddie had squeezed onto the bridge over the Ohio River.  She was back in business.

They drove for another hour, her sitting three car lengths back the whole time.  The Caddie veered off the freeway a few miles north of Charleston.  She followed suit and found herself at…

Oh, my God, she said to herself.  They’re not going into that hole, are they?

But they did, sliding into a truckstop even tackier than the one where she’d followed Yarazelski the night before.  Sharon stayed back and found a parking place near the restaurant that allowed her to watch the gas pumps.  Yarazelski got out of the car and started toward the restaurant while the shabby accountant type pumped gas.  From a nearby Winnebago, a padded blonde, clearly bleached, came bounding out.  Sharon could see the dark roots even at this distance. The woman bounced across the parking lot and threw herself around Yarazelski.

“Tell me he’s not going to… Eew!”  Sharon watched as Yarazelski stuffed a pair of bills into her cleavage.  They went over to the accountant and talked for a few minutes.  The accountant looked about as uneasy as Sharon felt watching this spectacle.  Yarazelski and the bleached blonde took the Caddie and parked it while the accountant wandered into the bar looking depressed.

Sharon now knew how she could get the keys from Yarazelski.  She wouldn’t go so far as to do anything with either of them, but if she could get into that car, she had a chance.

Every face around here was either white or brown.  The brown faces came accompanied by Spanish accents.  She didn’t want to wear it, but the only way she could blend in would be to emulate that bleached blonde.  The thought brought the unwelcome sound of the Rolling Stones “Brown Sugar” running through her head.  She swallowed hard, grabbed her bag and her hooker outfit:  Black sports bra, Daisy Dukes, and a thong she’d bought for a boyfriend she’d dumped before he ever saw her in it.  She found a pair of cheap sandals to go with it.

For the second time that day, she changed clothes in a truckstop shower.  For the second time that day, overweight white boys propositioned her.  This time, however, she smiled at them.  It took so little to slide into this role when only men needed to be convinced.

She returned to her car to stow her bag.  The Winnebago rocked furiously in its little corner of the lot.

Blake pulled off at an exit about ten miles north of Charleston, West Virginia.  On a bluff overlooking the interchange sat a large truckstop, larger than the one out by Walden and Guilford.  This couldn’t be the place Stan wanted to stop, Blake thought, but the gas gauge told him he didn’t have a choice.

“So where is this place you wanted to stop?” he asked.

Stan grinned at him.  “This is it, man.  Redneck’s paradise, but I like it, too.”

(continue reading…)

Chapter 8

For a short time, Koradovich believed it was all over.  Estevez and that little shit Simmons had read him back his entire life story, including the parts not shown in any police report.  It made him wonder just how much the feds had on him.  Christ, it was bad enough being “one of them commie bastards,” a blanket slur for anyone from the former Soviet Bloc.

As they escorted him into the Justice Center, it occurred to him he had less to lose than Mason in this deal.  Most of his businesses that fell outside the law he’d hidden well.  If his shylock operation went down, he had other assets to keep him afloat.  And some shylock customers would pay him no matter what happened.  He provided a service, after all.  People said, “Your credit’s good with Andre the Giant,” in more places than his car lot.

If the feds did start making noise, he’d throw them Mason and cut a deal.  Prison would inconvenience Koradovich.  Mason it would destroy.  He smiled at that, and wondered how long it’d take for Mason to become somebody’s bitch.

(continue reading…)