The alcohol had come from our largest distiller. That could mean another complication.
“Good quality shit,” Donatello told me as I pulled one kilo of powder taken from the boxes. Street value, there was at least two million and change. All headed for Indulgence.
Not a bad haul.
I pulled a chair from around an employee table, planting it in front of the guy. He was eying me warily. The man on his knees in front of me was sweating, enough so the stench was revolting this early in the morning. Given his young age, I doubted he’d been in control of more than a couple of operations.
I guess we all had to start somewhere.
There were no discerning tattoos like with cartel members or Bratva. Russians usually had their expression of loyalty carved into their skin. A barbaric practice. While that eliminated two potential sources, there were a half dozen more.
Given New Orleans’ location on the Gulf of Mexico with a commanding port and four interstates running through the city, the location was ripe for cockroaches of varying sizes hungering for a dose of prosperity.
“Who do you work for?” The question was simple and I expected an immediate answer.
“What do you mean? Champion Distillery like it said on the ticket.”
“Ah,” I said, glancing at Donatello. “So you have no idea how a couple million in powder just happened to appear in the bottom of the two dozen boxes of liquor you brought.”
He shrugged as if it was no big deal. Yet the sweat was getting stronger.
Even the dog whined, opposed to the odiferous stench.
“Hmmm… I guess it could happen to anyone. Right, Donatello?”
“Sure, boss. Last week we found gold bars in the bottom of the cognac crates.”
I thought about how to handle the situation. The driver wasn’t offering me anything to play with. “Why did you need five guys to deliver twenty boxes?”
“We like working in teams. There is no ‘I’ in T. E. A. M.”
He did not just quote a line from the movieScrooged. He thought this was funny.
I didn’t.
When I whipped out my favorite knife, he cringed enough to allow a reminder he was concerned about his wellbeing. When I shoved the point under his chin, he didn’t flinch.
Good boy.
He’d been well trained, completely unlike a typical driver. I twirled the sharp tip until a tiny string of blood appeared. Still, he did nothing but stare at me with cold, dark eyes.
Until I drove the blade between his legs in warning.
That got his attention, the single moan allowing Zorro to offer a howl.
And during the loud canine roar, I also heard the dude’s exclamation.
“Sei un fottuto stronzo. Ti ammazzerò.”
Well, well. We were finally getting somewhere.
You motherfucking asshole. I will kill you.
He likely thought I didn’t know Italian, which was his first language learned as a baby. That was always resorted to in times of stress. What he obviously hadn’t been told was that I had a Harvard education and had taken it upon myself to learn several languages.
That didn’t verify who he worked for. Italians in New Orleans were a dime a dozen. Even the Bratva used a few as their muscle.
I shifted the knife back and forth, debating what to do with him.
