Chapter Thirty Two - I Thought You Were Friends

Rudy and the Hawaiians were at the park shooting warm-ups when Pete arrived. Pete was introduced to Ben and Bill and then Rudy asked how Raven was.

“She was real upset.” Pete said. “Cried all night. All I could do was hold her and try to calm her down.”

Rudy shot a dagger his way. The idea of Pete consoling his girlfriend all night infuriated him.

“Come on.” Rudy said, “Let’s play some two on two while we wait for Charlie.” He fired a short range rocket pass at Pete that was way too hot to handle. It went through Pete’s fingers and bounced off his chest and high into the air.

“Hey. What the hell was that?” Pete asked incredulously.

“It’s called a pass, you pussy. Can’t you handle a pass?” Ben and Bill gave each other a puzzled look.

“Fine, Davis. Check the ball.” Pete said, firing a hot pass of his own at Rudy, who covered the fact that he couldn’t handle the pass by giving it a fingertip volley ball return pass, then he assumed a defensive position.

Pete lobbed the ball inbound to Ben and followed him down court to their basket. Ben made a sweet bounce pass to Pete, who caught it under the basket and went up for a lay in. As soon as his feet left the ground, Rudy gave him a body slam that sent him stumbling into the chain link fence surrounding the court.

Pete gathered himself and said, “I’ll take the ball out for the foul.”

“North Shore rules, brudda. No fouls in this game.” Rudy shot back. He took the ball out and resumed play while Pete stood with his hands on his hips shaking his head.

A few minutes later Pete set a screen for Ben to run a pick and roll. Rudy was shadowing Ben when he tried to rub off the pick and Pete took a small step into the play. Rudy didn’t back off and crashed into Pete sending both of them tumbling to the ground.
They got to their feet and Pete gave Rudy a two handed shove.

“What’s your problem, Davis?”

“You moved on the pick, man. That what happens when you try to set a moving screen.” Ben and Bill watched the pair, unsure if they should intervene.

A play later, Pete had the ball and an open look at the hoop. He started to go up for a jumper when Rudy stepped behind him and bent his knees into the back of Pete’s knees, throwing him off balance. It was one of the oldest playground tricks in Rudy’s arsenal and it always pissed people off but was tough for a ref to spot.

Pete half-leapt off balance and stumbled to the ground. He quickly got to his feet and made a bull rush at Rudy, catching him mid-body with his shoulder and driving the two of them onto the clay court. Before either of them could do much damage the big Hawaiians had pulled them apart and were restraining them.

“Da hell’s da matter wit you two?” Ben asked. “I thought you were sposed ta be friends?”

“That was before this sumbitch tried to steal my woman. I should have seen this one coming, Pete. Ever the knight in shining armor, just waiting for your chance to move in, Mr. Smooth fucking Operator. ‘I’ll look after you, Raven”.

Rudy lunged at Pete but couldn’t get free of Bill’s grasp.

“Is that what this is about? You’re jealous because I went with Raven last night? What was I supposed to do, just let her walk off into the night by herself? You think I needed any of this?”

“You got Beth and now you want Raven. At least I had the decency to get out of the way once it was clear that Beth chose you.”

“You are a stupid little shit, you know that Davis? I couldn’t steal Raven if I tried, which I wouldn’t. The woman is in love with you, you jerk. She wants to have your children! How can you not get that?”

Rudy was quiet for a minute. As his anger eased, he was beginning to feel like an idiot. Finally, he swallowed his pride, something he’d never been very good at. He let out a long sigh.

“I’m sorry, Pete. I know you’re right. I had a long, sleepless night, my stomach is in knots and then you show up talking about holding Raven all night and I lost it. I guess I just needed an outlet.”

Ben and Bill let go of Pete and Rudy.

“It’s OK, brah.” Pete said, with an arm around Rudy's shoulders. “Now take it out.”

He slammed the basketball as hard into Rudy’s chest as he could and then ran down court.

“You are dead meat, asshole.” Rudy shouted as he gave chase.


As Charlie worked through the last few details of his plan, he thought of all the times he’d had a chance to kill Azeri. The two of them had hunted wild boar so many times together that Charlie had lost count and he could easily have put a bullet in the man pretty much any one of those times.

The first time they went hunting had been his first opportunity. He drew a bead on the man and just like that, the moment he’d waited so long for was upon him. Azeri’s head in the cross-hairs but he couldn’t do it. His wife was gone and all he’d had left was his daughter and now she was gone too. Here was his chance to avenge her but it wasn’t right. How could he face his loved ones in the next life with murder on his hands?

He wasn’t a religious man but that night he asked the Universe what he should do. He wasn’t willing to walk away or to turn the other cheek. He knew he’d be leaving the world a better place if he took Azeri out of it but he couldn’t let Azeri turn him into a killer. Azeri had taken enough from him and he wasn’t taking anything else, especially not his soul.

He had a dream that night that he was talking to a jelly fish, a Sea Nettle actually, who insisted that he belonged in the Atlantic. It told him that the best way to take Azeri down was to take his money just before new product arrived and then let the bad guys be bad guys.

“Don’t worry,” the smart-assed fish had told him, “the elements will all come together and when the time is right, you’ll know it. In the meantime, get prepared and trust your instincts. You’ve never been a patient man but you’re about to become one.”

That was the reason he’d taken Rudy under his wing by helping him out with cheap rent and drawing him further into his social circle; his instincts told him to. When Charlie had seen Raven’s furniture at a gallery, he sought out the artist because he sensed that he was supposed to. He didn’t know why but he was trusting his instincts, like he'd been told.

Now, with everything that had happened and more than six million dollars in cash sitting in Azeri’s safe waiting to make the exchange, Charlie knew that this was the time.

Rudy and Pete were waiting for him when he arrived at the Beach Park in Punaluu but Ben and Bill discreetly waited on the court until they were summoned. Charlie had decided to explain himself to Rudy and his friend before they called the locals over. It would be a huge relief to finally tell someone and they needed to understand what this was all about for him.

“When my wife died,” Charlie began, “I didn’t deal with it very well. My daughter Chloe, was 19, just finished freshman year at the University of Texas in Austin. She came home to be with me but I was too involved in my own self-pity to be of much use to her. I was so grief stricken that it didn’t even occur to me that Chloe needed me more than I needed her.

She and my wife had been real tight. Truth be told, I was so busy with my business and investments that the two of them were the only real support system either of them had.” Charlie sighed. He’d been looking forward to sharing this with someone, getting it off his chest, but it was harder to talk about than he’d expected.

“After a few weeks of being ignored by her old man, Chloe wanted to come to Hawaii and stay in one of my condo’s, take a little R&R before resuming her college career. I had a bad feeling about the whole thing but I knew that I wasn’t much use to her so I figured maybe a change of scenery would be good for her and it might give me a chance to recover a little too.”

“Six weeks later I got the call that no parent should ever have to take. Chloe had jumped from the 9th floor balcony of the condo. The autopsy showed that she had a lethal dose of cocaine in her system and that she had already been dead when she hit the ground. That’s when I sold my business and moved to Hawaii to assume this role of pleasure-seeker that you know me as.”

“I hired a private investigator to look into Chloe’s death and we learned that Chloe had hit the party scene pretty hard after she arrived. She’d met some coke-cowboys in Makawao who were part of Azeri’s goon squad and it wasn’t long before she was partying at Azeri’s Ranch. Azeri took a shine to her and showed her how to shoot up but misjudged the dose and she OD’d. He had one of his goons, a dirty work expert by the name of Tony, take her back to my condo and throw her body off the balcony to make it look like a suicide.”

“That’s the condo I stayed in on Maui.” Rudy said.

“The same.” Charlie replied before resuming his story.

“When it comes to badass drug dealers, it’s not that tough to find out what happened but it’s real tough to get anyone to testify, so the police were never able to make a prosecutable case. That fact that Azeri owns most of them didn't help either." :

"That’s when I decided to kill Azeri myself and that’s what I set out to do when I befriended him. But when my chance came, I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t willing to become a killer but I wasn’t willing to let Azeri walk away from this either, so I came up with the plan that we’re about to execute.”

“Wow, Charlie.” Rudy said. “I feel pretty bad about misjudging you.”

“You thought of me the way I wanted you to.” Charlie said. “Toughest thing I’ve ever done in my life is let people think of me as a frivolous old fool who would hang with a scumbag like Azeri but I had to do it. I guess you could say I was in deep cover.”

Ben and Bill were called over and arrived wearing the big Hawaiian smiles that Rudy so much enjoyed about them. They were two of the happiest people Rudy had ever known. When the introductions were finished, Charlie laid out his plan.

“An old friend of mine worked for the CIA. Of course, he never gave up any state secrets but we spent many evening discussing some of the ways and means the CIA uses to accomplish things. He said that the secret to success was planning. Their most important jobs could literally take years of planning every detail, establishing an identity, endlessly reconnoitering until every stone has been turned, until every contingency has been explored and planned for.”

“I’ve been on the Islands full time now for two and a half years. Practically everything I’ve done in that time has been toward this end. I know alarm codes, safe combinations; I have copies of every key in that house. I’ve befriended Azeri’s men, given them gifts and looked after their families until they’re probably more loyal to me than to Azeri, if push ever came to shove. And now, the Universe has brought all of the elements together to make this happen.” He didn’t mention the Jellyfish, not wanting to be thought stark raving mad.

“Azeri is expecting a big shipment at 6 AM tomorrow morning. He has a pretty slick operation but he’s been a bit slow to join the computer age. Most big time dealers move their money around via the Information Superhighway to off-shore bank accounts but Azeri still believes in good old fashioned cash. That, gentlemen, is what's known as an Achilles heel and it's we’ll exploit to bring him down.”

“The goods are brought on a sailboat from Columbia. The traffickers have a pretty slick deal where they outfit sailboats for long distance sailing for folks with more money than brains. Once they’ve been outfitted with the latest navigational aids and safety systems and fortified for rough water, they take the boats for a major shake down cruise before delivering to the ignorant client.”

“The beauty of the operation is that it is completely legit, except for the cargo. They never use the same boat twice and they file all their logs and sailing plans, and communicate with the Coast Guard just like they’re supposed to. They get the goods via boat to boat transfers so they never go off route and never appear to be coming from Columbia, or some other suspicious port and they never enter or exit a port laden. Before they reach the dock in Kihei, the product is transferred to a speed boat that takes it to Azeri’s private dock in Halawa Bay.”

“The goods come from the Cali Cartel, who took over the Colombian trade when Escobar’s Medellin Cartel fell. They preferred bribery and graft to the over-the-top violence that Escobar was famous for and that’s how they quietly helped bring down Escobar and took the Colombian trade over. Don’t let that fool you, though, they’re bad mo-fo’s and they don’t hesitate to use violence when they need to.”

“When the Cali people arrive with six million dollars worth of cocaine and Azeri doesn’t have the cash, it’s going to be war. I can understand if any of you have a problem with that and want out but I, for one, won’t lose any sleep over bad guys killing bad guys. The way I figure it, this is going to put a serious kink in the Pacific drug trade for a long time to come.”

Charlie looked at each of them one at a time. “I’m in.” Rudy said. Pete nodded in agreement.

“Bad guys killing bad guys is one thing," Ben said, “but I need to know how we goin ta pull dis off witout bloodshed on our part.”

“Instead of guns, we’re going to arm ourselves with trichloromethane or methyl trichloride, commonly referred to as chloroform. Now this stuff ain’t like they show in the movies. It takes a lot more than a few drops on a hanky to knock someone out and it is risky. The amounts required to disable someone could potentially be fatal, though it’s unlikely to kill anyone if you stop administering it as soon as they go down.”

“At that point, you bind their hands and feet with these plastic handcuffs, then wrap the shit out of their ankles, wrists and mouth with duct tape to keep them from wriggling loose anytime soon. The chloroform will only last for about 10 minutes so we’ll want to move fast. We disable the staff, load up the money from the safe and get out, 1,2,3, just like that. No screwing around, no time to waste.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing with this chloroform stuff?” Ben asked.

“Oh, I know what I’m doing. I’ve sold my soul repeatedly over the last two years to put this plan together. I’ve tested every aspect of this plan, including using the chloroform on test subjects to make sure the dosages were right. I did that with college student volunteers under the auspices of a research project. Being filthy rich has its advantages.” Charlie smiled.

I’ve tested every single key I’m handing out, not just the masters they were cut from. That’s the level of detail I’ve put into this. I know this is a solid plan and this is the right time.” Charlie continued. “If this doesn’t work, if I get any one of you hurt, may my soul burn in hell for it.”

“Damn, brah, don’t get carried away.” Ben said with a grin.

“Like I said, there’s something over six million dollars in the safe. Azeri will shit when he finds out that I know the combination. I don’t need the money so it will be split five ways between you guys.”

“There are only four of us, Charlie.” Rudy said.

“I have an inside guy.” Charlie replied. “Best you don’t know who he is for now. He’s on the outs with Azeri and needs to pull this off to stay alive, so we can trust him. He still has friends on the goon squad and he knows the lay of the property better than anyone, except for maybe me.”

He went on to lay out the particulars, unfolding the plats and going over every inch of the house, meticulously explaining exactly where the staff would be at any given minute and exactly where he wanted each of them and when. If any of them had any doubts about Charlie’s plan going in, there were none left when Charlie got done laying it out. It was that meticulous.

“So that’s it, gentlemen,” he said when he finished. The Cali boys are due at 6 AM so we’ll hit the place at 4. That gives us just enough time to get in, secure the place and the personnel and get the hell out without leaving the Azeri crew enough time to react even if someone does manage to get loose and free them all after we’re gone.”

They dispersed to get some rest before putting the plan into action.

When Rudy and Pete got back to the safe house, Raven and the Wanker’s were nowhere to be found but Raven had left a note.

Rudy,

I know I can’t talk you out of this and I understand why you think you have to do it. I don’t know, you might even be right. I do know that if I could stop you, I would, but I can’t.

There are a lot of things about my past that you don’t know. I should have shared it all with you long ago but until now it seemed best just to let the past fade to distant memory.

I need to clear my head and I’m worried that Circe might get caught and the safe house will be compromised so I’ve taken the Wanker’s to a safe place to wait this out.
I know I told you that I won’t want you around anymore once you’ve done this but the truth just may be that you won’t want me once you know everything. When this is done, we’ll talk and I hope we can sort things out between us. Until then, be safe.

I love you.

Raven