PRL Serials

Previously on Old Man Young and the Con Man’s Daughter…

Falon is lethal on the streets and she is good at peaceful sit downs. She met with a man named Rebel in Memphis who connected her to a larger web of biker clubs that also sold drugs supplied by the east coast trafficker. Rebel wasn’t the man that he had been and he no longer sat as a leader among his peers, making decisions about his gang’s activities. Even though he was only in his forties, by the time Falon met him, he was like an elder to the current decision-makers who listened to his wisdom. 

“You’re messing with fire,” Rebel said to Falon when they met in his Country-Western bar. He chuckled to himself remembering his encounters with the man Fire and he had chosen the word deliberately. 

“I ain’t messing with it,” Falon said boldly, “I’m playing with it.”

Rebel smiled at her. “I can see to it that every trafficker with a bike buys from your man, I’ll even tell em to go to war with anybody that got a problem, but how that get you what you want? If Phil ain’t turned up by now, you might as well pay your respects and move on.”

Falon ignored the part about her father. She knew that he was alive, something deep inside told her that he needed her to find him, and she wouldn’t allow herself to doubt.

“You tell them to go to war and you tell them who started it. I want everybody to know that Clete is my muscle. If they want this to stop, they gotta take me out. And I won’t stop unless I get a sit down with Yuri.”

Rebel shook his head. He knew Yuri to be Fire’s nephew, and that after the death of three of the biggest players in east coast trafficking, Yuri had stepped into the void. He disappeared a while ago, but he declared the year 2020 the year of ascension and he has taken a hands on approach to the administration of his drug empire. He has personally visited and threatened the heads of major criminal organizations up and down the coast, and he has spread exotic drugs that he produced with a silent partner that he hoped to replicate in makeshift labs overseen locally by his distributors. Among those drugs was the blue meth that led to the disappearance of Falon’s father. Rebel had retired his seat as leader to avoid dealing with men like Yuri who never seemed to be held accountable for any horrible thing they were said to have done, and with seemingly unlimited resources to make the world their playground. He had met Yuri briefly when he sat in on a meet between his second cousin who had taken over his position in his gang and the man Yuri. Yuri shot one of the men there for security for no reason and increased the percentage of his commission from the product they sold. But the quality of the product they received from Yuri was never questionable and they could mark up the prices to cover Yuri’s cut. But Rebel didn’t like the way Yuri conducted business. His style always led to unnecessary death and cruelty, even a man like Rebel saw that.

He looked at Falon sincerely. 

“You do what you say and take a smaller cut than Yuri, we do what you ask. But you should think on what you doing. Bringing it all down on yourself like this. Ain’t no going back from that.”

Falon nodded. “I’m ready.”

Currently, in Knoxville, Tennessee

Detective Young is late for his meeting with the administrators of Knox County law enforcement, and he runs from the parking lot, and then along the sidewalk next to the black, metal fence and low bushes that separate the sidewalk from the low hills of the office grounds, to the front entrance. There is a short line of people waiting for their clearance to enter and Young looks visibly agitated, but waits patiently for his turn when he empties his pockets and paseses through a metal detector. 

He’s a couple minutes late and he had wrestled with himself about whether he should call to announce that he was running a few minutes behind, or if he should just apologize in person since he would arrive at Special Agent McDermit’s office no more than five minutes after the time they planned to meet. 

He overthinks it because of the importance of the meeting to him. It’s important that his request for the task force be taken seriously, and lateness, at least to Young, was a glaring sign of a lack of true dedication. 

When he makes it to McDermit’s office, she is the only one there and Young sighs with relief that they are not all waiting for him, but that relief is quickly replaced with concern. If his impression of lateness is correct, then neither the Sheriff nor the Chief of Police are that enthusiastic about his proposed solution for the disturbing number of mutilated or transformed bodies that he had presented to them at their previous meeting. 

McDermit smiles and she stands to greet him.

“I really want to thank you for sitting everyone down on this,” she says as the two sit. There is only one chair in her office for visitors, and Young knows that she is about to disappoint him.  “I had heard about the 2017 incident when it happened and our office actually worked with the North Carolina office to investigate the strange things that were being reported. I had no idea that there was a pattern of this. Once the CDC and CIA got involved, we assumed that they had a tight handle on everything and we moved on to domestic terror threats and online scams. As impressed as I am with the work you’ve presented, I’m sorry to say that the Chief and Sheriff had declined to form a task force to look into these matters. We actually spoke earlier and my agreement not to form my own task force out of this office was contingent on them letting me speak about it with my superiors. I have a direct order to stand down, and I am confident that the Chief and the Sheriff have received similar orders from the powers that be.”

Young is furious and he can only shake his head slowly back and forth as she talks.

“I have my orders, Detective, and I will obey them in my capacity as the Special Agent in Charge of this office. But you should know, that as a resident of Knox County, and this region of the country, I was rattled to my core at the material in your report. And even though your pursuit of this work will lead to your termination from your job, I hope that you won’t go quietly. I hope that you know that you have a sincere friend in me. You are what police should be. And it seems like somebody somewhere is trying to keep you from doing good work that needs to be done. Don’t quote me on that. My bosses were cagey, but they were adamant that I shut this down.”

“How can they do that, though?” Young asks. “Why am I the only one asking questions? Where are these people’s families? Someone has to care that their relatives got turned into monsters or their heads exploded. Why isn’t this big news.”

McDermit is sympathetic, she’d had the same reaction when she reviewed Young’s work.

“Whatever you decide to do, Detective, we need to talk outside of this professional setting. I think we’ll have a lot to discuss.”

Young looks into her eyes and he knows that she wants answers just like him. He nods at her.

“I’m gonna go resign,” he says. “I’ll be at the diner by noon.”

“Maybe we should be more discreet.”

It makes sense, Young thinks. He must have raised some flags with the work he had gathered. 

“I’ll call you,” McDermit says.

Young leaves and goes to the Sheriff’s office, and then to the office of the Chief of Police to let them know that they are cowards and to quit his job.

Meanwhile, somewhere near Memphis, Tennessee…

Rebel is nervous and he thinks he is doing an adequate job of hiding it. There’s no way for him to know, Yuri would treat Rebel the same if he shows anxiety or not. 

“I like Tennessee,” Yuri says, “you like Tennessee? You was born here?” 

The two of them are in the backroom of Rebel’s bar. Neither of them sit; Rebel leans against an old desk that is mostly there to fill the space, and Yuri stands in front of the closed door.

“I was, over in Chattanooga.”

“I been there. Don’t usually come out this way usually. I was born near Knoxville. We practically brothers ain’t we?” Yuri says this with a smile. He doesn’t mean it, he is trying to gauge Rebel to see if it he is offended by the notion. This is the first time the two have ever met one another  

Rebel says, “Something like that, I suppose.” He tries to smile, though the thought is ludicrous. He had never met a black man that he would call his brother, not even in jest, but even moreso than his race, Rebel couldn’t feel kinship with a man like Yuri who didn’t seem to respect the lives of others all that much. 

Yuri returns his smile.

“You probably came up in this shit like me, didn’t you? Maybe your daddy was the boss, or somebody you looked up to like a daddy, and now you here. Not in charge, but you might as well be.”

“It really ain’t like that,” Rebel said. “I ain’t trying to call no shots for nobody. I just got experience that people benefit from. I been there. And the one sitting there now is afraid that if the two of you talk face to face again, it might cause a ruckus we can all do without.”

This makes Yuri double over with laughter 

“He’s pissed I shot his guard? He must not be very well versed in this game, now is he? You know better than to bring expendables to a meet like this. I can’t shoot you to remind you who I am, you already know. I’d just be wasting bullets.”

Yuri knows that Rebel despises him and that he is working to control his emotions, which means that Rebel does indeed know what Yuri is capable of.

“So who is this bitch fucking with shit in my backyard?”

“Sweet girl, fine looking anyway. She ain’t all that sweet. Looking for her daddy, man name Phil. He usually all over the place, pulling scans and shit. We used him for a job a while ago. Good man, really professional. Got mixed up in some stuff recently in Knoxville. Ain’t like him at all, but don’t nothing about what happened make any sense.”

“That blue meth. I thought they could make it, they had what they needed, they must’ve just messed up. That blue shit Eakran made before he went home was something else. Everybody would’ve been right off that. But we can’t use that shit no more. So what? She fucking with me on some Kill Bill shit, huh?”

Rebel doesn’t quite understand. “I think she just making noise until you talk to her. She can call everybody off, just sit down with her.”

“How she got you running messages? You hit that or she just bad?”

Rebel chuckles to himself. 

“She’s bad man. You ain’t here for no reason. You must be feeling her hand in your pocket.”

“Soon as possible,” Yuri says. “I want this over. I’ve had to kill a lot of people recently. Just the two of us, me and her, at that shit shack Clete calls a headquarters. I’ll be in Knoxville in a week. Tell her to cool it until then.”

Rebel nods him out of the office and he takes a deep breath. Maybe Falon would kill him if he didn’t tell her what she wanted to know. That wouldn’t be a tragic loss.