Tonight, Dave Waterman was going to get laid. Sabrina, one of the dancers at the Blue Parrot where he worked as a doorman, had been giving him the come-on for weeks now, and they’d gone on one date, then another, and now it was the third date, and that was pay-off time, was he right or was he right?
He grinned at himself in the mirror as he splashed on the old Paco Rabanne, spruced himself up for the big event. Granted, he was no oil painting. He had a big dish of a face and nothing seemed to shift those blackheads on his nose, but he was big in all the departments that mattered and he worked out, kept himself fit – needed to in that job, all sorts of nutters out on a weekend spraying champagne at each other and sniffing lines of coke in the bogs, you had to be able to handle yourself.
He waggled his thick eyebrows and hummed along to the radio, it was the Quo, he loved them. Wondered if he should get something done about those eyebrows, met in the middle, that was a bad sign, wasn’t it, meant you had a short fuse? Well, he did have a short fuse, that much was true. He hoped Sabrina was going to put out tonight, or he’d be very annoyed.
The doorbell rang and he grabbed his jacket and tore off down the stairs, opened the front door; she was early.
It wasn’t Sabrina, though.
Dave stared at the two men standing there. They were very well-groomed, wearing identical smiles, and one of them held a snub-nosed automatic in his hand. Dave felt his bowels turn to liquid as he stared in disbelief at the gun.
‘Hi,’ said the one holding it. He sounded American. ‘We’re takin’ a little trip. Come on.’
Evan James was looking in the mirror too, and thinking that having acne as a kid had scarred him badly, but that was also good, because his bald head, mean eyes and scarred skin meant that he looked ferocious, and he was.
He’d just been in the showers at the boxing club, and he’d had a good bout tonight, beaten the crap out of his opponent, and his trainer had said he could almost go pro, he was that promising.
Now here he was, drying off, getting dressed, stuffing his shorts and gear into his bag and trotting off to the door of the club, calling out cheerio to the kids pounding the punchbag, but they were intent, head down, training hard, and didn’t hear him, and that was OK.
He went outside into the early-evening rain and trotted over to his car, and it was then that two well-dressed men approached him. One of them showed him a gun.
‘What the fuck?’ he said aloud, staring at it, mesmerized.
‘Let’s take a ride,’ they said.
‘Hit him again,’ said the one who seemed to be in charge of proceedings, the one with the American accent and the gun in his hand.
The other one hit Evan again, as instructed. Evan’s bloody head, which was already looking like a squashed watermelon, bounced around on his shoulders. He was tied to a chair in the depths of Smithfield meat market, and Dave Waterman was beside him, also tied to a chair, and looking pretty well done over, his features damned near unrecognizable, so Sabrina wasn’t going to get laid tonight, not by Dave anyway. Not tonight, and not, he was beginning to suspect, at any time in the future either.
‘This is nothing personal, guys,’ said the American. ‘This is just a lesson in manners, you understand me? And also, a lesson in who not to pick on, not ever.’
Neither man responded. Blood and urine was dripping on to the concrete floor.
‘Let’s wrap this up,’ said the American.