Danny Edwards walks down a sidewalk in Chicago, his head down, his fists buried in his coat. Flakes of snow drift in the air. Danny’s breath comes out in bursts of visible vapor. Cars drive by, slicing through gray slush.
Danny is thirty years old, well dressed, and handsome. Under ordinary circumstances, he would seem like a friendly guy, but today he has a determined look on his face. He’s anxious.
He pushes through the door into a steak house and is greeted by a rush of warm air, a cloud of cigarette smoke, and a barrel-chested host who lights up when he sees him.
“Yo, Danny,” the man says, his Chicago accent thick. “Long time no see, eh?”
When the man opens his arms to give Danny a hug, Danny awkwardly thrusts a hand out for a shake instead.
“How’ve you been?” Danny says, feigning a smile.
“Oh, you know,” says his longtime associate, who, unfazed by the rebuffed embrace, claps Danny on the shoulder. “Same ol’, same ol’.”
Danny opens his mouth for more small talk, but the host cuts him off with a nod toward the kitchen.
“He’s waiting for you in the back. Told me to send you in straightaway.”
Danny makes his way toward the rear of the restaurant, walking through tendrils of cigarette smoke. The room is full of low-hanging lamps and checkerboard tablecloths. He enters a redbrick hallway and walks past the kitchen, where white-clad cooks shout over a flaming grill, and then past the dish room, where a kid with pimples on his face and a cigarette between his lips is blasting dirty plates with a high-powered spray nozzle.
In the very back of the restaurant is an oak door, standing ajar, and Danny knocks gently and pokes his head inside.
“Hey, Mitch,” Danny says, trying to sound nonchalant.
“Sit down,” Mitch says to Danny without any of the good cheer the host displayed when Danny entered the restaurant.
Danny sits in a leather chair across from Mitch, who is leaning over a white platter. There are no vegetables on the plate, no sides whatsoever. Just a sixteen-ounce porterhouse barely seared on the outside and as bloody as a bullet wound on the inside.
Mitch, an intimidating sixtysomething man with silver-streaked hair and cold, dark eyes, saws into the meat and pops a dripping bite into his mouth.
“How’s it going?” Danny says.
“Cut the crap,” Mitch says, his voice like a garbage disposal filled with broken glass. “Where’s my money?”
Danny’s façade breaks. He nervously glances around the room. “Here’s the thing, Mitch,” he says, and then hesitates to continue.
Mitch stares at him. He holds his fork in one hand and a steak knife in the other, but his meal is forgotten. His attention is focused on Danny.
Danny takes a deep breath and then rips the Band-Aid off.
“The cops nabbed my cocaine,” Danny says. “The whole supply.”
Mitch’s expression is unreadable.
“I’m lucky they didn’t get me,” Danny says.
Mitch continues to stare, saying nothing. Danny fidgets in his chair.
“Listen,” Danny says. “I’ve got it all worked out. My buyers are still interested. They’re hungry for product. I just need another kilo. I’ll give all the profits to you. It will cover what I owe you and the new bag. You know I’m good for it.”
Mitch returns to his steak without speaking. Danny waits. He can’t sit still. He pulls at the collar of his shirt and wipes a bead of sweat from his brow. Mitch takes his time cutting off another bloody hunk of steak.
“So you’re going to pay me double?” Mitch says, without looking at Danny.
“Of course.”
“And a penalty fee?”
Danny hesitates. “If that’s what it takes. I want to make things right.”
“What’s up with you?” Mitch says, raising his eyes and fixing them on Danny. “You seem a little bit off. Why are you sweating so much?”