“Five hundred thousand will be wired to your Swiss account on Thursday.” Martin's
voice was tired and deep.
“That's great…I really appreciate this.”
“Oleg, you handled a sticky situation the way we want it handled….Jerry said you were
our man.”
The whirring of a vacuum cleaner could be heard on the background.
“Yeah, I thought doctors were an easier mark but that guy in Philly surprised us,” I told
Martin. “So…how exactly did you make this kind of money on the information we passed on?”
After months of planning and waiting, the final money reward seemed hugely crazy and
deserving at the same time. After all, Mrs. Linder put up quite a fight and was a real bitch about
the whole thing. And we definitely weren't expecting that Uzi.
“You don't need the details…just keep doing your job. There are countless of clinical
drug studies going on in the Northeast…
“Right, we'll be staying in central Jersey…laying low for the time being – like you said.”
An 18 wheeler trucker blew his horn behind the sedan.
“That's good…now, I don't expect to hear from you again until we find another doctor
on a study.”
“I understand.”
I turned the cell phone off and merged the sedan onto the NJ Turnpike, heading toward
Morris Plains, NJ. Traffic was quite heavy and we were moving just 30 miles per hour due to the
heavy rain that had just started. The rain was creating a loud noise inside the car.
Timothy Gilbert
Damage Control
36
“Looks like we need to find I-70 West.”
“Okay then…let's give Mihail a call once we find I-70.”
I glanced over at Karel wincing as he moved his left shoulder. That damn uzi surprised us
and I was screaming inside over our not knowing what kind of heat the Linder bodyguard was
packing. The week before played over and over in my head, how we first noticed this large guy
hanging around the Linder house and acting like a security person. We were told not to meet with
Mr. Linder or make a big scene over this development, but instead violently remove the
bodyguard with a home raid and get the information out of the Linders a little earlier than the plan had called for. If we had met with Mr. Linder, he might have decided to bolt town. That was
Martin's and Fred's conclusion, anyway, and they called the shots. I personally thought Mr.
Linder's friggin ego would never let him disappear even for a short time.
I didn't know we were supposed to plan for the uzi, though. We were thinking shot gun
or even an automatic pistol. But what was done was done, and Karel had a bullet in his shoulder
that needed to get removed. That was priority #1.
Priority #2 was to make sure we were still cool with Julio. We kind of screwed up with
the Lick Brothers incident in Miami. We needed this to run smoothly and it kinda didn't, at least
not the way I saw it. And we were pretty sure Mihail, our cleaner, was going to be pissed at our
mess at the Linders. Martin thought we did a good job, but Mihail could have sent his complaint
directly to Julio for all I knew, especially since someone much higher in the cartel than Martin
had brought Mihail into this drug study operation. It took us way too long to get the information
out of Mr. Linder and Karel's blood was on the kitchen floor. We hadn't been able to get in touch
with Mihail since we left the Linders eighteen hours earlier.
Timothy Gilbert
Damage Control
37
Monday, September 1st
5:45pm