Clive Cussler - Thriller 2 - Stories You Just Can’t Put Down

So nobody is fucking with Kozee. He is, as they say, shitting behind the tall cotton. Kozee is like a mutual fund; he’s involved in enough different enterprises so that if one dries up another usually picks up. Kozee took up a loan-sharking operation a few weeks ago when the mayor of Columbus, a high yellow with movie-star looks and the requisite ability to look competent without having a clue, declared a hapless war on drugs. So Kozee drops drugs and starts lending money at an interest rate that makes Chase Visa look like a benevolent enterprise. You don’t want to be late with Kozee. He doesn’t hire some bitch to call you every day and inquire about your payment. He breaks your door down and beats your ass. And this is the guy Andy goes to for a loan.

Andy’s thing with Kozee, however, is only part of the elephant pissing on C.T.’s morning. Andy’s stupidity isn’t limited to a business transaction with a psycho; no, Andy’s wires are crossed worse than that, as becomes evident when Andy starts talking about Rakkim.

C.T. knows Rakkim, a big guy, an underachiever in his midthirties who for seven years has been delivering pizza for Midnight Crisis, a twenty-four-hour North Campus pizza joint. Midnight Crisis has been described as “employing the unemployable since 1993,” and “unemployable” certainly applies to Rakkim, who up until a couple of months ago was a quiet guy who walked around oblivious, as if listening to an iPod through headphones or something, except that he doesn’t own an iPod. The only time that C.T. had seen him at all animated was in the Midnight Crisis party room at Rakkim’s thirtieth birthday party, which featured cake, liquor and a red-headed hooker from a High Street strip club, who gave Rakkim a lap dance and a blow job while those assembled, including the woman’s husband, howled in beery approval.

According to Andy, however, Rakkim has been acting like a little bitch for the last few months. Some third-string Ohio State tailback had given Rakkim shit about paying for a large pepperoni and slapped him across the face. Rakkim, totally out of character, had jacked the guy’s jaw, breaking it. All of a sudden, Rakkim becomes a legend in his own mind, acting out. Among other things-and this, according to Andy, is the cause of his instant problem-Rakkim hasn’t paid for a nickel bag that Jeff had fronted for him the month before.

C.T. remembers Jeff from when Andy was in high school, a quiet kid who wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful. According to Andy, Rakkim has no complaints with Jeff about the quality of the bag or shorting on the weight; Andy solemnly assures C.T. that Jeff would never do such a thing. Andy is pretending to be oblivious to the eye fuck that C.T. is giving him across the table at him. C.T. wondering, how do you know this? Now, Andy says, Rakkim just won’t pay Jeff, or return his phone calls, he’s just ignoring Jeff, blowing him off.

Jeff, according to Andy, is not a big-time dealer. Like a lot of the Washington Beach guys who deal small and local, he sells only to his friends with just enough markup for his own stash and to make his rent and lights. It’s a fragile street economics model that collapses if someone in the chain doesn’t come through. And Rakkim didn’t come through.

What has C.T. ready to play Whack-A-Mole with his son’s head in Lisa’s is that Andy has interjected himself into this mess. A couple of months ago Jeff, for whom budgeting is a science on the order of quantum physics, had been short for his rent. Andy, being a bro, and not wanting Jeff to interrupt his dealing, had slid a few Benjamins to Jeff. Now Jeff is telling Andy that since Rakkim had stiffed Jeff, Jeff had to stiff Andy. The result was that Andy was short, so…

“I went up to see Kozee,” Andy says. C.T. is looking at Andy across the dining table as if he was a turd floating in C.T.’s coffee. Lisa’s Café is quiet, only the two of them as customers, C.T. listening to this utter bullshit and torn between fatherly love and disgust. He begins mentally ticking off the various problems here-the borrowing of money, the drug involvement, the total fucking stupidity he is hearing come out of his son’s mouth-and shakes his head as he looks out of the front window.

Traffic on Indianola is quiet this early in the morning, and the sun is out, promising the first decent day after months of a bitterly cold and depressingly gray winter. C.T. had his breakfast sandwich cut into neat little squares and it’s now gone, though he cannot remember having eaten any of it. He is, as is his custom, dressed all in black, mock turtleneck and pants, shoes and socks, hat and leather coat. He sticks out at Lisa’s like a stiff prick at a county fair. He can tell that the owner of the restaurant, a gray-haired hippie who hasn’t changed his spectacles or his jeans since George McGovern ran for president, isn’t sure whether he likes C.T. and Andy coming here or not, their hood ambience not fitting in with the “peace, love and brotherhood” vibe of the place. They sit and mind their own business and never raise their voices, so fuck him, and besides, what is the guy going to say, don’t come here anymore, you’re scaring away my Nader For President traffic? For just a minute, C.T. wishes he was somewhere else, on a hotel balcony overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, lying on a chaise lounge and reading a novel while two twentysomethings in bikinis flip a coin to see who will give him warm head first.

C.T. shakes his head and looks at his son. “You remember Brando’s first line in The Godfather, Andy?” C.T. says, looking at him over the top of his coffee cup. Andy shakes his head, says no. C.T. widens his cheeks by grimacing, then does a more than passable Don Corleone, asking Andy, “Why didn’t you come to me first, instead of going to a stranger?”

Andy laughs, still amazed, at twenty-five, at his dad’s talent for mimicry. It’s an uncomfortable question, however, and C.T. is serious. Andy shakes his head again. “I wanted to get this one done on my own. I can’t keep coming to you all of the time.”

“I understand,” C.T. says. It takes an effort for him to keep his voice level. “But the last guy you want to have anything to do with is Kozee. You know how when you step in dogshit when you’re wearing cross-trainers, and it stays in the cracks forever, and you need a knife to dig it out but there’s always some left? That’s what dealing with Kozee is like.” He takes another sip of coffee. “But I don’t get why this was your problem. It was Jeff’s problem. And Jeff is now your problem. He borrowed the money from you. But he’s got money now, and you don’t. He still has money for dope, he hasn’t been evicted or anything, he’s not an orphan, and I saw him last night in the Surly Girl, trying to pick up what I think was a woman, who, regardless, was out of his league. So he’s got money. Your money.”

C.T. watches Andy sip on his soft drink-how can anyone drink that shit at 7:00 a.m., it’s beyond him-and waits for what’s next. Andy hasn’t changed since he was ten years old. When he gets caught in the juices of his own lies, he’ll slough deeper into the stew until he’s neck-high in his own bullshit.

Andy surprises him, though, coming at it from another direction. “How do you know?” he asks. Andy should know better, having heard enough stories about his dad-hell, he saw enough of them happening while he was growing up-that he’s aware that little happens on the north and east sides of town that his dad doesn’t know about. But he has to ask.

“How do you know?” he asks again.

C.T. ignores the question long enough to take a last sip of coffee, wondering how anyone-even an old hippie-outside of a police precinct house can fuck up a cup of Folgers. He motions for the check.