Losing Streak Read online

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  BOOKS BY JIM WILSKY

  The Ania Series (with Frank Zafiro)

  Harbinger

  Blood on Blood

  Queen of Diamonds

  Closing the Circle

  Sort ’Em Out Later

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  Here is a preview from Countdown by Matt Phillips, published by All Due Respect, an imprint of Down & Out Books.

  Click here for a complete catalog of titles available from Down & Out Books and its divisions and imprints.

  “…Marijuana is still illegal on the federal level. It’s listed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as a ‘Schedule I’ drug—the same classification as LSD, ecstasy and heroin. While the federal government allows banks to work with cannabis businesses in states that have passed laws approving recreational marijuana, banks still have to file suspicious activities reports in addition to following standard banking guidelines. That means extra costs. And since the federal prohibition against marijuana is still in effect, banks fear they could be held criminally liable should a marijuana business run afoul of the law. As a result, many cannabis businesses become all-cash enterprises, with stories abounding of business people hauling duffel bags filled with cash, making them targets for robberies…”

  —The San Diego Union-Tribune, July 5, 2017

  “We’re making money, okay? Making the money isn’t a problem. It’s more like—”

  “Where to put it all.”

  “That’s right. Where to put it all. Because the banks, they got federal insurance. And they don’t touch this marijuana money. Puts them in an awkward position, if they do.”

  “Like, maybe the feds decide to go and do something about this marijuana thing. And if they do, shit, you get all your assets frozen. Banks get got, and so do you.”

  “But it’s a lot of money. Like, bags of the stuff. I can’t spend it too fast—I do, and the next thing I know, I got the tax man up my ass about how I’m living.”

  “All this money…You need to hide it.”

  “But where? And how?”

  —Overheard in a bar

  THE FOUR

  ONE

  Donnie Zeus Echo ordered a double cheeseburger and a lemonade, sat on the boardwalk looking at the waist-high surf and girls walking by in bikini tops and cutoff jean shorts. The way the girls wore shorts now, with the bottoms of their asses hanging out and jiggling, not too classy a look. But Echo liked to watch those asses hang and bounce down the boardwalk. Makes a decent show when you’re chewing a burger and sipping something sweet, feeling that sea breeze on your face.

  He wanted a cold beer but he didn’t know a hamburger stand where they sold any. He’d have to go next door to the Surf Shack Tap House for that. No problem. He’d finish the burger and head over there, get a little drunk before he met with Glanson, his old battle buddy.

  Glanson? Shit. Still the same fuck up who shot himself in the foot with a Russian pistol.

  Echo used to be a grunt. Did a couple extended vacations in Eye-Rack. Learned to embrace the suck. Also learned to pull teeth and rip off fingernails. Arabic didn’t come easy to him so Echo had to find other ways. That’s another thing he learned: There’s lots of ways to get a thing done.

  A man has to be creative. Six years in the service and Echo got himself an honorable discharge and not a damn thing besides. Also of note: A panther tattoo on his chest and an M16 on each wrist. Talk about a gun show. Echo drove a ’99 Honda Civic with a leaky head gasket. He lived in a studio apartment off Garnet—fell asleep to the sound of coeds vomiting in the gutters. Close to the beach though. That was something he liked. And those asses hanging out. He liked those.

  He chewed faster and watched a brunette waddle past him. Man, he’d like a piece of that. Something juicy besides a cheeseburger. She ignored Echo’s big probing eyes, one of them a bit off point—his somewhat lazy eye. He was used to women ignoring him. Best way to get a girl’s attention was to wave some money in her face. Didn’t have to be much either. Enough for a decent meal and a cab ride. Simple pleasures, you know?

  That’s what he and Glanson should do, run down to Tijuana and get themselves a couple whores. Make the girls wear towels over their heads so the two grunts could pretend they were back in Eye-Rack. Good times, baby. The bad thing about Middle Eastern girls is they hold still while you fuck them. Far as he knew, Mexican girls bucked like wild horses.

  Yes, sir—he craved some señoritas with some decent ta-tas.

  Echo finished his burger, sucked down lemonade until the straw whistled. He watched a skinny blonde roll past on some roller blades. Not bad. But it’d be better with a few beers in him.

  He stood to go next door, careful to cover the bulge of the .45 tucked into his waistband. He touched the gun tenderly through the fabric of his Hawaiian shirt—oh, you wanna wanna lay her?—and smiled. Echo knew Glanson. Sure he did. But that didn’t mean he trusted Glanson.

  No fucking way. Not in this life. And not in the next one.

  TWO

  Abbicus Glanson had a small dick and he knew it. Sure, it bothered him. The way to make up for that—in Glanson’s mind—was to act crazy as shit, draw as much attention as you can. That worked in a war zone. It worked damn well. Not so much back home—in Murica, as Glanson liked to call it. Not when he needed a job, money, a place of residence.

  When he left the service, Glanson had a neon green Honda CBR crotch rocket, three shotguns, and a respectable collection of pocket knives.

  He rode the bike cross-country, decided to rent an apartment in San Diego. He liked the weather and, growing up in the Midwest, he dreamed about living near the Pacific Ocean. Didn’t use it much, but he liked to know all his childhood buddies back home were talking shit about him living in California. Let those suckers freeze their asses off in April. Glanson wore flip-flops and board shorts every fucking day, walked around in December with his shirt off.

  Fuck Glanson? No—fuck the small-town Midwest.

  Fuck you, motherfuckers.

  Still, Glanson had a bitch of a time finding steady work. He could always go back to the war zone with a private firm, but you can’t wear flip-flops and fuck surfer girls in Eye-Rack. About the best you can do is smoke a joint and drink a forty oz. But you had to avoid being killed.

  That was the big thing, the hard part.

  So, no private security gig in Eye-Rack. No steady job. Nothing. Nada.

  But then he met a guy at Ray’s in Ocean Beach, a favorite locals spot for live music. Glanson liked Ray’s for the drink specials and the scent of marijuana hanging in the air.

  This short bald guy, burly as hell in a blue tank, nods at Glanson and says, “Where you do yours, amigo?”

  “My what?”

  The guy points at a tattoo on Glanson’s wrist: An M16 wrapped by a hissing serpent. “Your tat, man. Where’d you get it?”

  “Eye-Rack,” Glanson says. “What’s it to you?”

  The guy turns around and lifts his tank over his head. His back is covered with a detailed soldier in full body armor. The soldier’s eyes squint at Glanson and the gun in his hand is pointed right at Glanson’s heart.

  Glanson says, “Holy shit.”

  The guy lowers his shirt and turns around, says, “Fucking A. Grunt through and through, baby.”

  Glanson got lucky. Turns out this other grunt—Abel Sendich—hit on an innovative business idea. With the legalization of marijuana in California, and the federal illegality of the drug, there’s a teeny weeny money problem. You can grow weed. You can sell it. You can smoke it and you can eat it. You can do just about whatever you want with it. But the money you make off it—there’s the motherfucking rub. You can’t put it in a bank because the IRS will start asking important questions. You can’t keep it at the dispensary—that’s asking for an ass whipping.

  So, what do you do with it?

  “Fuck if I know,” Glanson says. “You gotta laun
der it some way, clean it.”

  “Whatever you do,” Abel says deep into his fifth beer, “You got to move it, and you got to store it. No two ways about that—move the money, store the money.”

  Okay, then. Glanson thought about that for about half a beer. Next thing he knows, Abel’s asking Glanson if he needs a job. Bada-fucking-bing.

  Yes. He. Does.

  Two weeks later, Glanson found himself wearing a 9mm and a collared black Dickies shirt, watching the parking lot outside Acee’s Apothecary on Thirty-Second and Adams. “Might as well do it now,” he said. “Light traffic and it’s the end of business.”

  Next to him, in the driver’s seat of the white Econoline van, Abel nodded. “I’ll pull in along the door. Make sure you unclip the nine. Be ready, Glanson. We haven’t got pinged yet, but a couple guys got shitcanned up in North County just last week.”

  “I read about that,” Glanson said. Two private security guys shot down by ’bangers knocking over a dispensary in Del Mar, of all fucking places. The ’bangers escaped. The security guys were still sleeping. Taking permanent naps. “Came at them with automatics.”

  Abel chuckled. “We need to gear up, baby. I’m looking to get us some more shotties.”

  “Need a fucking grenade one of these days,” Glanson said.

  Abel didn’t say shit to that. He fired up the van, let it roll away from the curb, drift left across the street, and bounce into the parking lot. He stopped. “Your chariot awaits.”

  Glanson unclipped the holster for his nine, rested his right hand on the gun.

  He opened the passenger door and walked briskly toward the steel-reinforced door, pushed it open and disappeared into Acee’s Apothecary.

  This new job Glanson had—it paid the bills and it came with a perk: Mary Jane in spades.

  THREE

  Jessie Jessup didn’t come from money. She came from three generations of cattle ranchers in east Texas. She was a woman, but for all her beauty—petite at five-three and a hundred seven pounds—Jessie came from men. She was of men—hard fucking men. At thirty-seven years old, she still carried a hint of her Texas drawl, but a decade living in SoCal had drained most of that lilt from her speech.

  Jessie’s daddy taught her to invest in herself, in her own operation. He used to say you don’t got a damn thing until you can’t help but give yourself all the money you make. That didn’t make much sense to Jessie when she waited tables, or when she sold used cars, or when she worked at a place called Gino’s Nursery.

  It made sense now, after an ex-lover named Amos French taught Jessie a growing technique called aquaponics. That is to say, French taught Jessie how to grow weed using fish—that’s right, fucking fish. And you could do it inside, away from the prying eyes of neighbors and cops.

  Turned out, Jessie had herself a green thumb. Two green thumbs.

  She grew that dank motherfucking weed.

  But Jessie didn’t have any street smarts. Hell, she knew how to tell a horny cowpoke to fuck off, and she knew how to save a horse and ride a cowboy when she needed to, but she didn’t know how to negotiate the gangs and woe-be-gones of the gritty SoCal underbelly.

  That’s what LaDon was for. LaDon was big, he was black, and he was mean as shit when it came down to it. He also knew where they could open a dispensary operation and keep it under wraps. No way Jessie could get a legit dispensary license. That shit was too complicated. She took one look at the paperwork after reading through Proposition 64 and decided she’d do this shit on the sly.

  Enter LaDon, another regular at The Zip Zap Bar in City Heights. He used to tease her about drinking cosmos in a dive bar, but they got along. Sure, LaDon wanted a piece of her, but he also had an ex-wife and daughter.

  Jessie liked to fuck and run. She was a one-night stand kind of girl. That made LaDon off-limits.

  So, here the two of them were, waiting around after seven o’clock—quitting time, dammit—for the war vets to show up and get the cash. She watched LaDon sip a Diet Coke and pick at his fingernails. He had a Taser in his top drawer and fists big enough to crush a pumpkin. Their operation was bare bones, but at any one time, they were sitting on twenty K or more in straight cash. That’s decent bait for a stick-up boy, especially in the neighborhood LaDon chose for their place of business. The dispensary was off University Avenue, a small office next to a tire shop and below two studio apartments. All day, Jessie cringed at the little kids stomping on the ceiling. Since they opened this spot two months ago and started working social media and Weed Maps, they’d cleared nearly sixty K in sales.

  And shit was ramping up.

  Jessie shut off her computer, leaned back in her office chair, and said, “LaDon, you ever think about going on a diet?”

  He twirled the Diet Coke can so she could read the label: “The fuck you think this is, woman?”

  “That’s diabetes waiting to happen is what that is.”

  “I already have the diabetes, sister. It runs in the family.”

  “Only thing that runs in your family is a sweet tooth.”

  LaDon stared at her with menace eyes. “You going to cook me dinner this week?”

  “Wednesday, baby,” Jessie said. “I got some vegan pasta and a couple of—”

  “What’s that now?” LaDon shifted in his seat. The floor creaked with his weight. He planted his elbows on the steel desk, closed one eye in confusion.

  “Vegan pasta.” Jessie watched him, a smile barely visible at the corners of her mouth.

  “Uh-uh, Jess. I want some motherfucking ribs. Or that thing you made last time…” He snapped his fingers searching for the name.

  “Marsala,” she said. “Chicken marsala.”

  “That was some good white people food. I’ll eat that whenever. But vegan pasta? Oh, hell no.”

  Jessie laughed, blew a lock of brown hair from her eyes. “You might like it, big boy.”

  LaDon shook his head, checked his cell for the time. “Where these motherfuckers at?”

  “Making the Friday rounds,” Jessie said.

  “Let me get this straight,” LaDon said, “These dudes are keeping our money with a lot of other drug dealers’ money? And you’re good with that?”

  “They’re a security start up. They’re solving an important problem.”

  “Sixty K ain’t never gonna be a problem for me, Jess.”

  Jessie shrugged. They couldn’t keep the money in the office—in fact, it was LaDon who told her that. But he didn’t like the guy who came to see her about holding their money. Bald guy named Abel. He was a fast talker and sarcastic as hell. But it wasn’t him who sold Jessie on the service.

  It was Abel’s partner, a tall eucalyptus-looking guy—white-ish skin and thin, wispy hair—named Glanson. Another war vet. She guessed they served together.

  Jessie liked Glanson. He was good looking and had honest eyes. She hoped he was coming to get their pick up this evening.

  It’d be nice to see Glanson.

  LaDon said, “I think it’s because you like the tall one.”

  Jessie rolled her eyes. She turned around in the office chair and began to unlock the safe. “You know I’m the kind of girl who does it one night at a time—I’m not looking for a ball and chain.”

  “Whatever you say.” LaDon leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

  Jessie finished punching in the combination and the safe door creaked open to reveal six stacks of money bound by thick rubber bands. She reached inside and began to pull the money out, tossing stack after stack into a gray duffel bag.

  LaDon took a toothpick from a tray on his desk, began to run it along his hairline. “We gonna do six figures this month?”

  “Not this month,” Jessie said. “But business is fucking booming. We’re looking at twenty K.”

  “And you need any help with the grow?”

  “I could use someone to do my laundry, clean up the apartment for me.”

  “
Fuck that,” LaDon said. “I’m busy.”

  Jessie finished with the money, zipped the bag closed, and secured it with a small combination lock. She turned and looked at LaDon. “I’ve been wondering…you got a nickname, LaDon?”

  LaDon smiled that nice big smile of his. “They call me Captain Groove,” he said. “You wanna know why?” He shimmied in his seat.

  Jessie laughed, she couldn’t help it. “You smart ass…”

  Click here to learn more about Countdown by Matt Phillips.

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  Here is a preview from The Ornery Gene, a murder mystery by Warren C. Embree.

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  Chapter One

  Wednesday, 9:15 p.m.

  Sam Danielson slowed his pickup to a stop beside an old cattle chute, switched off the engine, rolled the window all the way down, and listened. He absentmindedly counted the cricket chirps for ten seconds, added forty to the number of chirps and calculated it to be about sixty-five degrees or so outside. A trick his dad had taught him. It was a little chilly for July in this part of the hills, but he had heard the low rumbling of thunder on the drive out. It smelled like rain; there was a storm moving from the northeast that was cooling things down. There could even be some ice in it. He checked his watch: nine-fifteen. Just past twilight. He opened the pickup door and took a deep breath. He reached over, grabbed the flashlight from the glove box, and slid out of the driver’s seat onto the soft sand.