Ollie was staying at the bar and opening that goddamn phone. It was all we had to potentially tie Byron to Summerfield. I hoped to hell there was something that would at least take the heat off me and Junior for his death. If reasonable doubt was all we could get, then reasonable doubt was what we’d have to settle for.
I walked Twitch up to the office and poured us both a couple of fingers of Jim Beam.
Twitch didn’t drink, but he was game enough to take a timid sip, wincing as he did so. “You’ve never poured me a drink before.”
I threw mine back, letting the physical burn match the anger churning inside me. Everything was fire, everything burning under my fingertips. I wanted to rage. I wanted to tear the world down. But I knew that letting my natural instinct to Hulk the fuck out would not only get me killed, but Kelly too.
Maybe I was growing up.
Still felt like we were all going to get killed anyway.
“So, Manny and Benito are hip to take this fucker down with us, John Woo-style. If you know a place where we can buy a shitload of doves, we’re good.”
“I’m going in alone,” I said.
“Fuck that,” Twitch said, shaking his head. “No. Fuck no.”
“I need you guys behind me.”
“I’m confused now.”
“This guy has me by the balls here.”
“Uh-huh,” Twitch said. “I got that.”
“Which is why this is mine, and mine only to handle.”
“I’m still not following.” His eyeball twitched in confusion.
I bit the inside of my cheek “I don’t see me walking out. If I can get Kelly out, fine. But I don’t see where this ends any way except with me in a ditch.”
“So we blaze in there. Shoot anything that doesn’t have tits. What’s the problem?”
“Are we the Avengers?”
Twitch smiled. “Fucking A.”
“Then avenge my ass if I’m not back here with Kelly.”
“But…”
“If I don’t come back, then burn it. Burn it all down. You guys are my contingency plan.”
Twitch’s eyes lit up at the prospect of unleashing the Biblical-level of violence that I knew he was capable of. “I both like and really don’t like that part of your scenario. Don’t get me wrong. I’m more than happy to follow through on my part of the plan. But that still doesn’t change the fact that your plan is hella stoopid.”
“I’m not going to argue with you on that. If I can get Kelly out, just hand the money over and walk away, I’m going to. I have to try that first. I can’t risk her getting killed.”
“But you can risk getting yourself killed.”
“Yep. Like we do.”
“Like we do.” Twitch popped the rest of his shot, coughed, then squinted back tears.
“You okay?”
“Good as I’m going to be,” he said. “Junior is okay with this?”
“He’s gonna have to be.” But boy howdy, he wasn’t going to be.
“Manny and Benito are going to be disappointed.”
“They’ll get over it, I’m sure.”
Then, unexpectedly, Twitch threw his arms around me in a bear hug, face pressed against my chest. “Sorry.”
“No, man. Maybe we should hug more. We can still be macho and hug, right?”
“Ollie would like that.” Then he snickered.
I stared at him. Something dinged in my brain. It was no different than the thousands of cracks we’d made over the years about each other’s sexuality and masculinity.
But because of the recent events, I heard what Twitch was saying for the first time.
“What?” Twitch said, noticing the change in my face.
“Why did you say that?”
Twitch shrugged. “I dunno. Because he’s gay? And we always make gay jokes about Ollie.”
I felt my jaw drop nearly through the floor. “You knew?”
Twitch’s eyes went wide. “You didn’t?”
I had nothing. “How long have you known?”
Twitch paused, eyes narrowing as he tried to assess whether or not I was messing with him. “Uh, since I met him? Please don’t tell me that you’re just figuring this out now.”
“Did he tell you?”
“We never had a conversation about it. I think it’s pretty clear.”
Well, maybe for some of us.
Twitch scrunched his face up. “Did he have to tell you?”
“In a way.”
“So lemme get this straight. For the last twenty years, you thought that all my fucking with him for being gay was...” He stopped. “Oh, shit. So when Junior makes all those cracks...”
I finished the sentence for him. “He wasn’t meaning to be a dick.”
“You think.”
“Pretty sure. Me and Junior thought you were busting his balls. Like we do.”
“And I’m the only one who knew?” Twitch said. “You gotta be kidding me.”
“Did Ollie know you knew?”
Twitch opened his mouth to answer, then paused. “Oh shit. He just thinks we’re assholes.”
“To be fair, some of us were just being assholes.”
Twitch shook his head. “There is the probability that Junior might really be one…y’know, where this is concerned.” Twitch whistled as he stuck his index finger into his closed fist. Then he pointed at said fist. “In this instance, the hand represents a dude’s butt.”
“I get it,” I said. “I’m gonna have a talk with him about it,”
“Thought you probably weren’t coming back later.”
“Oh yeah. That.” I clapped my hands together. “Anyhoo, I’m going to get myself together and head over to Raja.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to the boys. How long you want us to wait before we storm the castle?”
I grabbed Twitch by the back of his neck and looked him dead in the eyes. “If I’m not back by the time the sun comes up, it’s the last sunrise I want that motherfucker to see.”
Twitch’s eye made with a happy little jumping jack. “Done.” Twitch walked back downstairs to break the news to his new besties.
I slid the trumpet case out from behind the Dry Sack and opened it.
Damn, that was a lot of money.
I sighed and opened the desk drawer where we kept the rolls of duct tape and what remained of the first aid kit. As I started redressing my wound before battle, I got an idea.
Maybe not the greatest idea.
But an idea.
***
I walked back down the stairs, all bundled up and ready to roll.
“Ollie. How you doing on that phone?”
Ollie didn’t look up from the screen. He was in his zone. “I’m pretty close to hacking the provider’s website, at which point I’ll at least have a list of recent calls. I have the programs uploaded. All I have to do then is run the numbers through the IOS.”
I had no idea what IOS meant, so I just said, “Rock on.”
Ollie gave me the devil horn fingers.
“Junior, soon as he opens that thing, get Underdog here and give him all of whatever we get.”
“Nah. Twitch can do that.”
Twitch raised his hand. “I don’t think I should be the guy dealing with the cops.”
I opened my palm at Twitch. “See? You have to do it. I gotta go.” I turned and headed to the door.
“Hey, hold on a sec. Let me get my coat,” Junior said.
“I gotta do this solo.”
“Nah. That’s not gonna happen,” he said, buttoning up his pea coat.
“Don’t fight me on this, Junior. I need you guys to—”
“I’m not fighting with you. I’m just coming with.” Junior finished his plastic cup of wine in three huge gulps, then burped. “If you want to fight about it, feel free. I’m still going.”
“Dammit.” I looked at Audrey, who was still blissfully unaware of what was about to go down. Granted, the activities so far—what with my vomiting, injuries, and general air of pain and violence—were nothing unusual for The Cellar.
“Are you taking my schnoogums home with you tonight?” She scratched Burrito behind the ears. Burrito happily leaned into her fingernails and purred.
Yes, purred.
My dog is fucking weird.
“You mind another night? Or two?” I asked.
“Of course not!” she said. “You hear that, Buwwito! You’re going to stay with Grammy Audrey some more.”
Burrito yipped in Chihuahuan glee, his tiny tail whipping the air.
I decided to head out before her baby talk left me with type-2 diabetes. Because I needed that on top of everything and everyone else that was going to try to kill me in the next hour. “Time?”
“We got eleven minutes,” Junior said. “Take note that I said ‘we’ not ‘you.’”
“Noted, fuckhole.”
“Let’s go, then, cheesedick.”
“Okay, twatwaffle.”
“Twatwaffle?” Junior scrunched his face. “The hell is a twatwaffle?”
“Never mind…”
***
The storm was still in whiteout, with the gusts lashing our faces. Junior and I had to yell in order to hear each other over the screaming wind. “I can’t believe you thought I wasn’t coming along,” Junior yelled. “Were you just going to walk on me?”
“First chance I get, I’m taking him down, out if I can. The second I’m close enough, I’m ripping his fucking throat out.”
“Okay. I got no problem with that. What’s your point?”
“His boys are probably going to beat me to death once that happens. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a bullet.”
“So it’s a suicide mission. This ain’t our first one, frankly.” Junior slipped, his feet sliding willy-nilly before he caught himself on a parking meter. “Fuck! Save them the trouble if we break our necks walking over there. I’m gonna ask again, what’s your point?”
“I’d rather not have your death on my hands, but you seem determined to have it your way.”
“Meh. What else did I have planned for the day? Let’s do this, Sundance!”
I tried to explain why Butch and Sundance was a terrible fucking appropriation, but another gust of wind blew what felt like an entire snowball down my throat. Then I realized that for the first time, his usage was appropriate considering the circumstances.
It kinda sucked to realize that.
We turned onto Lansdowne and stood for a moment in front of the large double doors at the entrance to Raja. The place was locked tight, but there was an intercom to the left of the ornate metal gate.
Junior took a knee, stretching for his toes as I reached for the buzzer.
I stopped just short of hitting the button. “The hell are you doing?”
“Loosening up my quads. Making sure my laces are tight. Shit gets real, I don’t wanna trip on a shoelace or get a cramp.”
Wasn’t a bad idea, that. I began my own slow calisthenics, glad that no passing cars would see our ridiculoys warm-up. Once my blood started flowing, that’s when the guilt hit me. Especially when the item in my pocket poked me in the ribs while I did my trunk twists. “I gotta tell you something, Junior.”
“Now? Can you tell me inside, where I’m not freezing my balls off?”
“In the event we both get shot in the head the second we walk in the door, I think it’s best that we talk now.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he said, blowing into his mittens. “What is it?”
“Miss Kitty is gone.”
Junior blinked at me. “What are you talking about?”
“I had to scrap her.” Did I just call the goddamn car “her”? “I couldn’t take the chance that the car was going to be more evidence to bury us with.” Mostly true.
Junior blinked at me again.
“I saved you this.” I fumbled in my pocket and brought out the antenna. I placed it in both his mittens like I was handing him a holy relic.
He stared at it a second. I couldn’t tell if there were tears in his eyes, since they would have frozen instantly anyway.
“I’m sorry,” I said, the guilt knotting my stomach. “Say something.”
Junior flicked his wrist, extending the antenna. Then he started viciously whipping my legs with it.
“You son of a bitch!” he yelled. “How could you do that to Miss Kitty?”
“I, ow, didn’t do it, fuck, for the fun of it!” The thrashing antenna hurt even more than it normally would, what with my shin being half frostbitten.
“I loved that car, Boo! How? How could you do that?”
“I thought it, shit, needed to, fucking ow, happen! Dammit, dude. Cut it out!”
Junior stopped flaying the skin off my legs, and I stopped the ridiculous dance I was doing as I tried to halfheartedly avoid the blows I knew I deserved. “You lousy fuck,” he said sadly.
“Noted,” I said, rubbing at the intense stinging on my legs. “Save some for the guys inside, though, will ya?”
“Why are you telling me this now? You’re the kind of prick who takes a girl to the fancy restaurant to break up with her!”
“Because we’re probably going to fucking die here, Junior. I didn’t want to take that to my grave.”
Junior shook it off, retracted the antenna, then gave it a kiss before he put it in the pocket of his coat.
That kiss was one of the saddest things I’d ever seen.
“We good?” I asked.
“No. No, we are not good. You killed my car. But we will discuss this at another time.”
At least he was still operating under the notion that there would be another time. Unless he planned on hounding me with the issue into the afterlife—which wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
I pressed the doorbell by the club’s entrance. I couldn’t hear the ring, but a buzzing sounded along with a click. As I opened the door, the flood of warm air melted the snowflakes on my face and coat.
We got two steps in before the gun was placed against the back of my neck.
“Surprise,” said Marcus. “Junior?”
“Yeah.” Junior’s face immediately shifted into war mode.
“Kindly walk in front of Boo, here.” I could hear the smile on his face.
“This isn’t a great way to start a negotiation,” I said. Although I couldn’t look at him, I could hear by his high nasal tone that his schnozz was still taped good and tight after I’d given it a horsey ride on my kneecap.
“Unh-unh,” Marcus said. “See, that’s where you’ve been wrong about what’s about to go down here. Ain’t shit about to be negotiated.”
Junior went, “Wanh wanh, wanh wanh wanh wanh.” A pretty good impersonation of both Marcus and Charlie Brown’s teacher. Junior snickered through his nose at his own impression.
I giggled, then got mad that I did. That fucker—couldn’t we do anything seriously?
Marcus cleared his throat, hard. “This isn’t a negotiation. It never—”
“Wanh.”
Another giggle.
I snorted.
Marcus said, “It never was. You’re going to give us what we want.”
“Wanh wanh.”
Then we both lost it, making it worse by trying really hard not to lose it.
“Hey,” Marcus yelled. “I am holding a fucking gun at your head here!”
“Yeah, meant to mention that,” I said. “You working guns now? Wasn’t this a part of the whole ‘who’s a pussy’ debate we just went through a couple days ago?”
“Because this makes you a pussy, you know,” Junior said.
“I’m moving up in the world, Malone. Doing some critical work for Mr. Summerfield now. Need some serious hardware to back that up. Start walking.”
“I’m not walking with a gun to the back of my head.” I dusted the snow from the front of my jacket all over the expensive carpeting at Raja. Maybe gave it a water stain. That’d learn ’em. Fight the power.
“You messing with me?” Marcus said, his voice rising a notch. Poor Marcus. I bet he had a really cool scenario in his imagination that was supposed to go down. And there I was, fucking it all up again being a dick about things.
“You know where the money is?” I asked him over my shoulder. It was then that I noticed he was wearing one of those NBA-style hard plastic nose guards. Guess I really broke his face up good.
“You didn’t bring it?” Marcus said incredulously.
“I’m not as stupid as you and your boss think I am.”
Junior looked me up and down. “Yeah. I didn’t know that either. Feel like I should have noticed you weren’t carrying a goddamn trumpet case. You think you could have mentioned that part of your plan?”
“We didn’t discuss any plan. You weren’t part of this plan. You insisted on tagging along.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” said Marcus. “Again, I am holding a gun here.”
“And you’re going to either put it down or shoot me, “I said. “Then you can explain to Summerfield why you put a bullet into the only man who knows where his money is.”
Marcus just stood there, the gun pressing harder under my ear.
“And you don’t even know how to properly use that thing,” I said. “I’d rather not have you catch your foot on one of these fancy-ass curtains and accidentally blow the top of my head off.”
“The fuck you talking about?”
“First off, you never stand this close to someone and press a gun against their head unless you intend on shooting them.”
Marcus sighed. “I promise I will not accidentally shoot you.”
“Not that at all. Bullets move fast. That’s the point. You stand this close, you’re giving up the advantage that distance and speed would give…” I took one step back, the gun slipping past my ear, then harmlessly parallel to my face.
Before he could react, I grabbed his arm by the wrist and bent at the waist, throwing all my upper body weight into it. His shoulder popped and he shrieked, squeezing off two shots before he was airborne and upside down.
When he landed, I knelt on his wrist and drove my elbow down straight into his noseguard. The molded plastic shattered and his eyes rolled up.
I drew back for another shot, but Junior soccer-kicked him to the temple with his Docs.
The gun clattered when it hit the floor. I grabbed it and pointed it at Marcus’s chest.
From a distance.
“Holy fuck, Bruce Lee! That was awesome!” Junior said, fist-bumping me. “The hell you learn to do that?”
“YMCA class, bitch,” I said to Marcus, and spat on his face.
Marcus groaned and rolled to his side, clutching his head.
“Now stand up and lead the way,” I said.
Legs still wobbly, Marcus stumbled as he tried to stand. He caught himself on the armrest of a velvet couch, and snarled at me. “You are a fucking dead man, Malone. You’re not walking out of here. No way.”
“Guy talks a lot of smack for somebody who just lost a tooth,” Junior said.
Marcus reached into his mouth, his finger finding the gap where his lower incisor used to be. His eyes flared with rage, but it was quickly extinguished by the barrel I was holding on him.
“Drop it!” came a voice I wasn’t expecting or happy to hear. Alex parted the curtains that led to the main bar. With him were my old buddies, Cornrows and Lineman.
They all had guns pointed at me.
“See, Marcus?” I said. “These guys know how to hold a gun.” I opened my grip and let the gun dangle by the trigger guard.
Marcus grabbed a heavy iron lamp off the table and got ready to swing it into my temple.
“Quit it, Marcus. You’ve already fucked this up enough,” Alex said.
“Yeah, Marcus,” Junior said, waggling his finger.
Marcus bellowed and threw the lamp to the floor with a sound thump.
“Don’t worry. They keep this up, and you’ll get your opportunity,” Alex said.
“Don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Junior said. “He’s had chances already, and look how that’s turned out.”
“Where’s Summerfield?” I said.
“He’ll be with us in a moment.”
“Where’s the girl? Where’s Kelly?”
Alex’s eyebrow went up. “All of your questions will be answered in a minute. Please walk with us. Boys, put the guns down.”
Cornrows and Lineman looked at each other warily, but lowered their guns as told. They were even more bandaged up than Marcus was. Cornrows had his non-gun-bearing arm in a sling and Lineman had a lump on the side of his jaw that looked like he’d taken a hook from Tyson in his prime.
“Whoa. What happened to those guys?” Junior asked me.
“That was me.”
“Nice! You did some damage while I was away.”
“Didn’t feel like it at the time, but I guess I did.”
We fist-bumped again.
Alex and the goon trio led us up a wide carpeted stairwell to a glass door. Curtained, of course. What was with all the curtains? Every time a goddamn curtain opened in this bar, I didn’t like what was on the other side. Affixed to the wall was a small brass plaque that read VIP in elegant cursive.
Lineman opened the door to a long room with a wide oak table in the middle. On the far end was a bar filled with top-shelf liquor. Six bar stools in slipcovers lined the short bar. Even the damn chairs in the place were curtained. “I’ll take a Pappy Van Winkle, neat,” I said to Marcus.
“Fuck you,” he said.
“Well, there goes his tip,” Junior said.
“We should speak to the manager,” I said.
We were almost hit with another fit of giggles when, from under one of the barstool slipcovers, a whimper. The chair was turned toward the bar, so I didn’t notice that the cover was also draped over what appeared to be a person sitting on the barstool.
The room burned red. Acid pumped into my heart and every muscle went into nitro mode.
Junior grabbed my forearm. “Don’t,” was all he said. “Not yet.”
I slowly walked toward her.
“Sit down,” Cornrows said.
I kept walking. “Shoot me,” I said.
From the corner of my eye, I saw all three of the goons give each other looks, but none of them moved to stop me, and none of them shot me.
I crouched in front of the chair and turned it toward me. Another frightened whimper. Gently, I lifted the thin plastic off Ginny, her eyes terrified and red-rimmed.
What?
I didn’t know which one of us wore the bigger look of surprise, but hers quickly turned to fury as she started to kick her legs at me, her curses at my general existence barely muffled by the duct tape over her mouth.
I rolled back, her foot missing my chin by an inch.
From the other end of the room, Junior said, “All right. Now I’m confused.”
I jumped up, trying to maintain composure. “What is she doing here?”
Marcus looked at me, now also puzzled. “Who the hell did you think was here?”
“Where’s Kelly?” I asked.
“This Kelly?” asked a BBC-accented voice. Ian Summerfield walked into the room from a door that was flush with the wall on the far end of the short bar. I didn’t even know the door was there. I guess VIP’s needed to be sneaky.
“You know fucking well and good—” I stopped short as my heart leapt out of my chest, ran behind me, and gave me an emotional wedgie.
Summerfield led a visibly concerned and confused Kelly into the room, his hand roughly gripping her upper arm.
Plainly not a hostage of any goddamn kind.
Or at least she wasn’t until I opened my goddamn mouth.
There were a couple of weighted seconds of silence…
…before Junior absolutely lost his shit laughing.