The air stunk of synthetic fish. In a new world where it felt like anything was possible, it turned out that the only thing that human beings learned to grow with some sort of success on Mars was fish. Mostly because the red soil on Mars was toxic. It was full of chlorine, which killed any crops or plants that humans tried to grow. The government tried all kinds of ways to fix it, like using dusting ships to spray the planet with highly concentrated doses of Vitamin C to neutralize the chlorine, and when that didn’t work, detonating carbon bombs in hopes of completely changing the elemental makeup of the soil. Hell, they even tried to bring in dirt from Earth. But nothing worked. All the plants just continued to die, year after year.
Which is why the majority of biologists and horticulturists started growing synthetic meat in labs instead. But it never seemed like they could get that quite right either. Red meat looked the part, but tasted like high-end dog food. Poultry actually tasted the closest to the real thing, but it would spoil within hours, leading to a wave of salmonella poisonings that nearly ended civilization, at least on Mars. Fish, however, not only looked the part, but tasted like it too. The only downside was the smell, which was akin to a salmon fillet brought home from a restaurant in a to-go container, only to be forgotten and left to languish in the back of the refrigerator for months.
“It stinks up here,” Vicious muttered, as he stood at the edge of the fish factory’s roof with a pair of binoculars to his eyes.
“Well, you’re the one who wanted to stake out Dodd’s apartment. I warned you that he lived across from the fish factory. Which stinks. So, stakers can’t be choosers,” Fearless replied.
“That’s not the expression.”
Fearless shrugged. Whatever. He was seated in a folding chair with the titanium briefcase open on the ground next to him. Discarded empty packs of playing cards littered the roof. Fearless opened another pack and selected a card. A king of hearts. He held his lighter beneath it and set it ablaze, watching as the dour face of the sovereign slowly melted away.
Vicious lowered the binoculars and turned back to him. “Are you going to do that all night or you going to help me?”
Fearless motioned to his eyes. “Only one pair of binocs.”
“I meant that we could work in shifts.”
“I don’t know, that kind of sounds like a you job. I don’t think I’d be very good at it.”
“So you’re not going to help? At all?”
Fearless ignored him as he reached into the deck and pulled out another card. A joker. He took in the cartoon court jester and his bright red jumpsuit. His motley pattern hat, like his shoes, had bells on them. Unlike the stern king, he wore an animated grin on his face. It was as if he was trying so hard to be noticed, to stand out in this fifty-two card royal family.
“You know, I kind of feel bad for the jokers,” Fearless said. “There’s four kings in a deck. Four queens. Four jacks. Four aces. Four of everything else. But there’s only two jokers. And for the most part, people just throw them away. Like they’re nothing.”
Vicious took the joker from Fearless’s hand and whipped it off the roof. Fearless looked to his empty hand, then to Vicious. “What the hell is your problem?”
Vicious stood over him. He was doing a slow burn. “What’s my problem? What’s my problem? You’re my problem!”
Fearless pointed to his chest with a dubious look in his eye. Who, me?
“Yes! You! We’ve been up here all fucking day waiting for Dodd to get home and all you can do is sit on your ass and light cards on fire!”
Fearless stood up. Then stepped up to Vicious. “What would you have me do, huh? This is boring as hell! Do you want me to stand there next to you and say the eagle has landed or whatever it is you say on stakeouts when your target finally shows up? Would that make you happy?”
Vicious clenched his jaw. He didn’t take kindly to the sarcasm.
But Fearless kept at it. “Hey, I got another idea—how ’bout we high-five when we see him! Now that would be swell!”
Vicious drove both of his palms square into Fearless’s chest and pushed him to the ground. Fearless glared back at Vicious in disbelief. And then, in one fluid move, he hopped back up to his feet. It was a brief, albeit impressive reminder of his innate athleticism that he rarely showcased.
Fearless rolled up his sleeves and approached Vicious. He clenched his fists tight. “You wanna go? Do you? Because I promise you this isn’t going to end like when we were kids.”
Vicious’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know exactly what it means.”
There was a fire in Fearless’s eyes. He was usually excruciatingly unflappable. As cool, calm, and extremely nonchalant as they come. But clearly, the push had set him off. Vicious had gone too far. Vicious exhaled. He took a moment to collect himself. “Alright, look, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t pull that shit again,” Fearless grumbled as he sat back down in his folding chair. He reached down and grabbed a new pack of cards out of the case. And began to light them on fire.
Vicious paced in front of him. “I’m just frustrated, alright? None of this makes any sense. Why would Dodd fuck over Slade, of all people, like that? She’s been the Red Dragon’s number one drug distributor for years. There’s no one better than her. And then, you get your hands on the formula for a new party drug and instead of handing the hard drives over to her to manufacture, you send her a briefcase full of playing cards and hire an assassin to shoot up the place and make it look like the drop went south?”
Fearless considered this for a moment, then replied with a matter-of-fact tone, “Yeah, pretty much.”
Vicious pressed him. “But why?”
Fearless lit an ace of spades on fire. He shrugged as he watched it evaporate into the Martian night. “Isn’t it pretty obvious? Slade’s expensive.”
“I don’t buy it. That’s a hell of a lot of theater to cut out the middle man.”
Fearless sighed. “Think about it. This new party drug is going to take the solar system by storm and make everyone involved pretty goddamn rich. If you have those hard drives with the formula on them, you don’t need Slade. You can manufacture the drug yourself. Which is going to really piss off all the other cartels. So what do you do? You take out Slade and make it look like couple of disgruntled janitors were trying to get rich, then when you find out they’re still alive, you turn the entire Red Dragon against them to save face.”
Vicious slowly walked back to the roof’s edge. Something about the whole scenario still wasn’t sitting quite right with him. He put the binoculars to his eyes again, then softly whispered to himself. “If you want to cut out the middle man, then just cut out the middle man…”
Fearless approached and stood next to Vicious. “Look, Dodd’s a fuckin’ moron. But the plan was genius, really.”
At that moment across the street, the light turned on in Dodd’s fifth floor apartment. He stumbled drunkenly inside, a teased-haired blonde in a leopard print bodysuit on his hip. With him were two armed Red Dragon heavies. The kind of guys who have different brass knuckles for different days of the week. Vicious passed the binoculars to Fearless, who took in the scene.
“The eagle has landed, alright. Looks like he’s got a couple new friends, too. And I don’t mean the stripper in the leopard print. Hiring two heavies is an odd choice for a guy who has the entire Red Dragon looking for us right now, which means either he’s paranoid, or—”
“He’s scared.”
Fearless slowly nodded in agreement. “What’s our next move?”
“Let’s go give him something to be scared about,” Vicious said with a grin that was worthy of his name. He was going to enjoy this. He turned and headed for the roof’s maintenance door nearby, then called back to Fearless over his shoulder.
“Call Pouncey. Tell her we’re going to need that catering truck.”
* * *
The next morning, Fearless and Vicious waited in the catering truck outside of Dodd’s apartment building. Empty coffee cups littered the dashboard. Vicious hadn’t slept all night, his eyes locked on the front door and the doorman who guarded it. Fearless, on the other hand, slept soundly with his feet up on the dashboard. So soundly, in fact, that he hadn’t even noticed the three times that Vicious had left the van and come back with coffee. Vicious marveled. Fearless didn’t sleep like a baby. He slept like a bear hibernating in a soundproofed bomb shelter.
Just after sunrise, Dodd emerged from the apartment building’s lobby with the two heavies at his side. Vicious thought they looked formidable from the roof of the factory, but now seeing them up close, he realized that they were likely a combined six hundred pounds. One wore a dual holster strap that held twin fully automatic mini-Uzi submachine guns. The other brazenly carried a sawed-off shotgun slung over his shoulder like a medieval knight carrying a sword.
Vicious shook Fearless awake. “Wake up. Dodd’s on the move.”
Fearless mumbled, lost in a dream. “Mr. Crab… Please… I mean you and your people no harm… I come in peace…”
Vicious pinched Fearless’s arm. Hard. “Fearless.”
He startled awake and rubbed his arm. “Ow what the hell, man?”
“Good morning.” Vicious motioned to Dodd’s security detail. “They look like Red Dragon heavies to you?”
Fearless’s eyes narrowed. “Red Dragon heavies don’t carry in the open like that. Those two are hired guns. Black market heavies, maybe.”
Vicious slowly began to put the pieces together. “So Dodd not only upgrades his security detail after the shootout at Slade’s, but he hires them from outside the Red Dragon. What does that tell you?”
“That Dodd doesn’t even trust the Red Dragon right now.” Vicious shook his head. “I’m telling you, something’s not right.”
Dodd and his heavies piled into a town car idling in the front of the apartment building. It was an older Earth model, much like the town car that Vicious and Fearless drove before it was obliterated at the hands of Spider and Karma on the highway. Just sight of the car infuriated Fearless.
“You’ve got to be shitting me. The guy’s car gets stolen by us and he gets the exact same old piece of shit as before?” Fearless stewed for a moment, then turned to Vicious. “You think the air conditioning works?”
Vicious shrugged, “Does it matter?”
“To me, yes.”
“Then probably.”
Fearless shook his head. “That motherfucker. Screw kidnapping him, let’s just kill him.”
Vicious chuckled. “Keep your nine millimeter in your pants. We got a long day ahead of us.”
As the town car pulled away, Vicious put the catering van in gear. They tailed the town car from a distance as Dodd went about his day, in search of a window of opportunity to abduct their old boss. Finding a window to pull it off without the knowledge of his new security detail, however, would prove easier said than done.
Dodd’s first stop was breakfast at Tiny Mel’s Big Diner, where Fearless and Vicious watched from the corner of the parking lot as their former boss sat in a window booth and ate five well done strips of synthetic bacon with a side of double well done hash browns. “A breakfast crime that should be punishable by law,” Fearless said. The heavies never left his side, including when Dodd spent twenty-five minutes in the bathroom—which Vicious noted was “absolutely disgusting, but also kind of hilarious, if you think about it.”
Post breakfast, Dodd’s next stop was at the concrete company, which just the idea of trying to infiltrate, let alone entering in order to kidnap a Red Dragon capo, was a truly moronic undertaking. Or, as Fearless noted during their five-hour stay across the street where they waited for the new town car to emerge, trying to abduct Dodd from inside the concrete company was like “strapping a bunch of Venus Wagyu to your human meat sack and trying to poach a cub from a pack of starving lions in the middle of the jungle.” Vicious disagreed, countering that it was more like “covering yourself in honey and then trying to kidnap the queen bee from the hive.” However, this didn’t make sense to Fearless, “because bees make honey,” so technically, “covering yourself in honey might actually give you a cloaking-like ability” and thus, “abducting the queen bee would actually be easier than with the meat sack.” Vicious didn’t actually care about this, but Fearless couldn’t stop dreaming up hypothetical food-based kidnapping scenarios, including swimming in a pool of chum full of bloodthirsty great white sharks. The problem was, he couldn’t decide if the sharks would be “too distracted by the abundance of chum” and “not even notice you in the pool,” and if this was “actually a better cloaking system than the honey and the bees thing,” and at some point the thought of it totally overwhelmed Fearless and he fell asleep. Vicious was relieved and was grateful for some quiet.
Dodd emerged from the concrete company just after two o’clock and promptly headed to the River Club, a private members only eatery located on the 80th floor of the Diamond Tower in the Tharsis City financial district. Dodd stayed inside with his security detail until approximately four o’clock and emerged drunk, having had four dry gin martinis served up with a double twist, as was his preference. A trip back to his apartment followed, where he napped until six o’clock, rose for a quick takeout dinner of synthetic sushi and departed the apartment building at eight o’clock, on the move yet again.
Fearless furrowed his brow as he watched the town car weave through Tharsis. It was something about the amount of left and right turns, the streets they used, the shortcuts they took. It was as if he knew where Dodd was going. He could feel his blood starting to boil. Mostly because he had made the drive himself, so many times, after dropping Dodd off for the night at his apartment. And then, the town car came to a stop, right where he knew it would in front of—
Ana’s Bar.
“I knew it. I knew he was going here tonight,” Fearless seethed. “That greasy, wannabe gangster scumbag doesn’t even deserve to drink the stale urine in the urinals at Ana’s Bar. You don’t think he has a table, do you? I’ll kill myself if they gave a fake-ass gangster like Dodd his own table.”
Vicious took in the main entrance of Ana’s for a moment. And then, it hit him.
“It has to be Ana’s. That’s where we grab Dodd.”
Fearless scoffed. Then chuckled. And followed that with a chortle. “You have got to be kidding me, right? Like, you’re not actually serious right now, are you?”
Vicious reasoned with him. “Look. You saw—Dodd goes throughout the day with those heavies. There’s not a single second that they leave his side. Hell, they were by his side while he was taking a dump at the diner. I know Ana’s isn’t the best choice, but it’s our only choice.”
“Hell, why don’t we just climb in bed with him at the end of, too!” Fearless detonated. “Look, Vicious, I love you, but we couldn’t get into Ana’s on a normal day, even if we wanted to. And let us not forget the fact that we’re currently the Red Dragon persona non grata. At this point, we’d probably have a better shot of walking into the Elder Temple than Ana’s.”
Vicious looked back out the window at Ana’s main door. He watched as various gangsters entered. Not all of them were Red Dragon, but the majority were. But no matter the crime family, they all had one thing in common. They brought girls. Lots of girls.
Vicious grinned. “Girls.”
Fearless raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“Girls don’t have a problem getting in Ana’s, right?”
“I guess not, why?”
Vicious continued. He grew giddy at the idea. “What if we sent in a girl? No, two girls. And we convinced them to seduce Dodd. Meanwhile, you and I could take out those heavies. And the girls bring Dodd back to my father’s penthouse where we’re waiting.”
Fearless considered this. “I’m not going to lie, that idea isn’t half bad. Actually, it’s damn good. One problem. Where the hell are we going to get two girls, at this hour, who are going to agree to do this for us, for zero money?”
Vicious sunk in his chair. And so did Fearless. They both stared ahead. Defeated. They were left without any options. Dodd was untouchable. Or so it seemed.
They both slowly turned their heads to the opposite side of the street. To a place where they might just find the girls they’re looking for. Another bar. Their bar.
The Bar.
* * *
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Fearless and Vicious stood in the dark alley outside the backdoor to The Bar, when the door opened—and Felix, the bartender with the tattooed hands, emerged. He was a welcome sight to them. They didn’t have many allies left in Tharsis City.
“I’m just going to assume that if you’re coming in through the back you’re in some hot water,” Felix said, with a fair amount of concern.
“Scalding, if we’re being honest.” Vicious peered through the open back door. “Look, Felix—you remember those college girls from the other night, the ones who we bought that bottle of champagne for?”
A bewildered smirk crept across Felix’s face. “Those two hustlers that claimed they were college girls so poor saps like you will buy them drinks? Yeah. I think I remember them.”
Fearless grumbled. “I knew it.”
Vicious brushed him off. “Any idea where those two live, Felix?”
“Not a clue,” Felix replied, still wearing that same smirk. He motioned back towards the bar. “But I do know that they’re sitting in the corner of the bar right now, just like they have been all week.”
Fearless and Vicious traded a glance. Luck, for once, was on their side. Vicious turned back to Felix.
“Any way you could give us fifteen minutes in your private room with them?”
Felix grinned. “Sure thing. I’ll tell them there’s a couple of high rollers back there that want to buy them another vintage bottle of champagne.” Then, he looked to Fearless with an irk in his eye. “Your tab’s still open, by the way.”
Fearless rolled his eyes. “I’ll settle up with you once I get my stolen wallet back from the blonde one.”
* * *
Fiona and Penny approached the private room with an extra bounce in their step. Felix had told them that two wealthy businessmen had been admiring them from across the bar. And instead of just sending them a drink like any regular schmo would, they bought out the entire back room for the evening and put a bottle of 2010 Dom Perignon on ice in order to get to know them better. But when they opened the door, they found the room was empty.
“Sit,” Vicious ordered.
Recognizing him, the girls quickly turned to leave—but Fearless slammed the door shut and blocked the exit. The girls slowly retreated to the center of the room, terrified by the realization that they were trapped in a room with the two men they had gone home with the other night.
Fiona, the blonde who stole Fearless’s wallet, spoke up. “Listen, assholes. Whatever it is you think you’re doing right now, I can promise you that you’re going to regret it.”
Vicious rolled his eyes. And sighed. “It’s not what you think it is.”
Fearless chimed in. “Except for my wallet. That part is what you think it is. Which is that I want it back.”
Fiona scoffed. “Are you fucking kidding me? That’s what this is about?”
Fearless doubled down. “Yes, yes it is.”
Penny interjected, disgusted. “Let me get this straight, you tricked two women into going into a private room and locked the door behind you to confront them about a missing wallet? You need a therapist.” And then turned to Vicious. “Especially you.”
“Look, it’s not about the wallet, alright?” Vicious reassured them. “We have an offer to make you.”
Fiona glared back at him. “Locking us in a backroom at a bar is a pretty fuckin’ creepy way to make us an offer, don’t you think?”
Vicious motioned to the long dining-room table in the center of the room. “Sit. Please.”
The girls traded a glance—then reluctantly sat down on the far end, putting a fair amount of space between them.
“Thank you,” Vicious calmly said. “Are you familiar with the bar across the street?”
Penny, the quieter one with the auburn hair, spoke up. “Sure. It’s that gangster joint, right?”
Vicious nodded. “Yes. It is. Right now, there’s a man inside that bar that my friend and I need to spend some quality time with. The problem, you see, is that the two of us can’t get into Ana’s—”
Fiona gritted her teeth. “Because you’re losers?”
Fearless interjected. “You had sex with this loser, thank you very much.”
Fiona chuckled. “No, we didn’t.”
Fearless scoffed. “Yes, we did.”
“I mean, that depends on what you call sex. Because the kind I have doesn’t involve you passing out on top of the bed the moment we walked in the bedroom. You were snoring like a Labrador. And then, at one point, you started mumbling in your sleep. Something about a giant crab?”
Fearless turned bright red. He fell silent. Vicious tried to hold in his laugh with all his might. But it only made it worse. And then, it emerged from his throat—a loud snort.
Fearless slowly turned to Vicious and whispered. “It’s not funny.”
“It’s pretty funny.”
“Would you just get on with the meeting, please.”
“Sorry.” Vicious collected himself, then spoke for them both. “Look, we can’t get in because our rank within our organization isn’t high enough. But women don’t have a problem getting in.”
Fiona began to put the pieces together. And began to negotiate with Vicious. “So let me get this straight. If I’m hearing you correctly, you want us to help you kidnap this guy?”
“More like… lure him back to my penthouse,” Vicious countered.
“What’s in it for us?”
“We forget about the whole wallet thing. We’re even.”
Fiona scoffed. “Please. The only thing in that wallet was a few receipts for Big Jae’s noodle bar. That place sucks. You can have your wallet back.”
Vicious took a deep breath. “We don’t have any cash to offer you.”
Fiona mulled this over for a minute, until she turned to Penny and whispered in her ear. They shared a chuckle and a nod. Then turned back to Vicious. “There is something. A landscape on the wall of the living room. An abstract of a sunset.”
Vicious scoffed. “That’s a Rothko. From Earth. It’s priceless. And doesn’t belong to me. Absolutely not.”
Fearless leaned over and whispered to Vicious. “Fuck the painting. Give it to them.”
“It’s my father’s.”
“Would you rather have your dad be pissed off that a painting went missing from his penthouse he’s never slept in or would you rather die? Your call.”
Vicious gritted his teeth. And turned back to the girls. “Fine. You have a deal.”
Fiona and Penny shared a satisfied grin for a moment, until Fiona turned back to the two of them. “So, what’s the plan?”
“We’ll be in your ear every step of the way.” Vicious reached into his pocket and procured a small black case with an earpiece inside. He slid it across the table. “Dodd will be at Ana’s tonight.”
“A little short notice, don’t you think?” Fiona snapped back.
Vicious clenched his jaw. “You want the Rothko or not?”
“Fine,” Fiona replied. Then, she grinned. “We’ll just need a few minutes to get changed into more… appropriate evening wear.”
Fiona and Penny didn’t walk into Ana’s Bar. They strutted. Dressed in matching bright red body-hugging, short sequined dresses, they forewent the long line full of bustling twentysomethings hoping to get in. They confidently approached the surly doorman, who guarded the entrance with a velvet rope and a scowl. But Fiona and Penny didn’t let either stop them. Literally. They opted to pretend like they owned the place and attempted to walk right in—
“Hold up right there,” the doorman said, with a raised hand. “There’s a line.”
Fiona flashed him a coquettish grin. “That’s cute,” then motioned to Penny. “But we don’t do lines.”
The doorman didn’t flinch. “Well I do. This is Ana’s. And if you ain’t got a table, you get in line. Now get to the back of the line before I call security.”
Penny anxiously pulled Fiona aside, making sure to stay within earshot of the doorman. “Just call Dodd, will you? He’ll come out front and get us.”
“I don’t know, he hates when I do that. But I guess I don’t have a choice.”
Fiona was reaching for her cell phone, when the doorman interrupted. “Did you just say you’re with Dodd?”
Fiona smirked. “That’s right.”
“My apologies, then. Right this way, ladies.” The doorman lifted the velvet rope and motioned to the door. “Welcome to Ana’s.”
* * *
Inside, Penny and Fiona passed through a small, dark lobby. A small line had formed in front of a Dutch door where an employee stood. The girls passed by, assuming it was a coat check—until the gangster at the front of the line placed his chrome .357 Magnum on the counter. And in exchange for the handheld howitzer, the employee handed him a ticket. This wasn’t a coat check. Not even close. It was a gun check. And if you wanted to get inside Ana’s you had best follow the rules or risk permanent banishment.
Fiona and Penny traded a tense glance—perhaps this job was slightly more dangerous than they had bargained for. But there was no turning back now. Especially when there was a genuine Rothko waiting for them on the other side of the deal. And so they headed for the double doors that led into the club’s main dining area; they could hear the muffled sound of big, brassy jazz reverberating from the other side. And as two security guards standing on either side of the doors opened them simultaneously, they stepped into:
Inflamed nightclub nonpareil. The lighting was all deep ocher and cigarette smoke, swirling above the high-back booths and blue-velvet-tufted banquettes. On stage, there was a nine-piece jazz band humming away. Fiona and Penny cut through the main dining area, passed the tables reserved weeks in advance. The clientele appeared decidedly sketchy. It wasn’t a Red Dragon bar. But they were tolerated. Just like the rest of the thieves and pirates who had to check their guns at the door if they wanted to do business.
And although the gangsters who came there tonight were from all different background and organizations, some of them friends, some of them sworn enemies, there was one universal truth—inside these walls, life was damn good.
Fiona and Penny made their way towards the long, polished mahogany bar that anchored the room. They posted up by the counter, where they ordered two double single malts apiece. The first to shoot quickly to calm their nerves. The second to neutralize any nerves that were still left standing.
Fiona’s eyes ticked to Penny. “You ready for this?”
Penny gave a hesitant nod. She wasn’t quite sure if she’d ever be ready for a night quite like this, but then again, what choice did they have?
Fiona reached into her purse and removed the earpiece from its case and placed it in her ear. Almost instantaneously, she heard a voice. It was Vicious.
“Dodd prefers a corner booth. He’ll be seated with two strapped heavies on either side. Dodd will be the guy in the middle drinking a gin martini.”
Fiona clocked him. Her eyes ticked to his drink. “Double twist?”
“That’s him.”
Fiona winced as she looked Dodd over. He was sweating, as was his custom. A bead of sweat slowly trickled from his sideburn, the liquid turned black from the cheap boxed hair dye he had used that afternoon. He was the frog prince of Ana’s palace, but no amount of kisses would turn him back into a dashing cavalier. And for that, Fiona could only manage a single word.
“Gross.”
Vicious continued with his instructions. “Now listen closely. You are to approach Dodd’s table, but do not speak until spoken to. When Dodd addresses you and asks who you are, you tell him that you are a gift. Sent from the Neptune Cartel. Now, once he accepts, don’t waste time. No staying for a drink. Tell him you have a car waiting out back. In the alley. And that all three of them are welcome. Understood?”
“Yeah, I got it. But the earpiece has to go.”
“Absolutely not. We need to be your voice on the inside.”
“Then let us be your eyes,” Fiona softly quipped back, keeping her voice down at the ever crowding bar. “Because you know how we end up dead? When your gangster boss sees a fuckin’ earpiece in my ear.”
Fiona waited for a reply, but there was only silence. She took a deep breath. And waited some more. Until.
“Fine.”
Fiona grinned. “See you boys on the other side.”
* * *
Fearless and Vicious stood in the dark. The alley that ran behind Ana’sBar was particularly decrepit, as far as alleys went, overrun with the rats and roaches who camped out all night to get a taste of the scraps of the five-course tasting menu that evening. It was also wet. Very wet. Dozens of air conditioners from the apartment building opposite Ana’s faced the alley, spewing thick beads of condensation onto the pavement below. In short, it was an absolutely miserable place to be standing on a Saturday night.
A cigarette dangled from Fearless’s mouth. He sparked a lighter to it, but it was quickly extinguished by a droplet of air conditioner water. Fearless grumbled. He flicked the soggy cigarette to the pavement. He was bitter. Extremely so. He turned to Vicious, whose face was twisted into an equally rancorous expression.
“We’ve been waiting two hours for these girls. And I can’t even smoke.”
Vicious clenched his jaw. “They’ll come through for us. They’re probably just tied up. Just give it time.”
Fearless chuckled. Then shook his head. “For a guy who’s a pretty dark motherfucker, you sure do have faith in people. Because I can guarantee you those two chicks are inside having the time of their fucking lives and have already forgotten about the two assholes waiting for them in the alley.”
“What is your obsession with Ana’s? It’s just a bar. Who cares!”
“I care!” Fearless snapped back. “Ana’s is the only reason I joined the Red Dragon!”
Vicious scoffed. “You told me that you joined the Red Dragon for me.”
“Of course I told you that. It’s because that’s what you needed to hear. Just like every other pep talk I have to give you when you’re feeling sad. To be honest, you’re fucking miserable!”
Vicious motioned towards the alley’s entrance. “If I’m so miserable, then why don’t you leave? Go ahead! No one’s forcing you to be friends with me! I was only friends with you in the first place because I felt bad for you.”
Fearless threw his hands in the air and stomped off. “Well in that case, I’m out. Good luck getting yourself out of this jam alone.”
Vicious called after him. “Better alone than with you. Douchebag.”
“Prick—” Fearless snickered, but the dig was cut short, as he walked directly into a three-hundred-pound brick wall that smelled of cheap cologne and expensive whiskey. The man didn’t even flinch. As Fearless slowly looked up to find:
One of Dodd’s heavies, standing before him in the alley. Fearless gulped. The heavy, who he had only seen from a distance, was somehow bigger than he could have possibly imagined. And just as Fearless clenched his fists in what surely would be a futile effort to defend himself, the heavy spoke.
“Amn tis bathroo is et, an. Sh. Er am I.”
The heavy, to Fearless’s surprise, was drunk. Hammered. Pissed. Properly shit-faced. All of them, combined. He wobbled as he spoke, his feet performing a delicate dance as they tried to keep this behemoth upright. His eyes were glassed over. And at one point, he started to snore.
Fearless slowly turned back to Vicious, eyes wide, who offered a silent shrug. Fearless turned back to the heavy, put two fingers in his chest and sent the mammoth bruiser tumbling into a nearby pile of trash, where he continued to snore.
When, from the backdoor emerged Dodd, his arms draped around Fiona and Penny. He too, was in the midst of a roaring blackout. The two girls dragged him into the alley, his chin softly bobbing against his chest as he softly mumbled incoherent nonsense.
Fearless took in Dodd, and with it the girls’ work, with total disbelief. “Holy shit. What did you do to these poor motherfuckers?”
Fiona shrugged. “Well, we followed your instructions until we realized that Dodd’s security weren’t about to let him walk into a dark back alley. So we took matters into our own hands.”
Penny chimed in with a smirk. “And by that we mean tequila. Mostly.”
Vicious whispered, so as not to disturb Dodd, “Wait. Where’s the other heavy?”
Fiona motioned back to Ana’s. “Passed out in the booth. Pissed himself too. You would think these big guys could hold their liquor. But it’s actually the opposite.”
Vicious couldn’t help but grin. “Nice work.”
“Thanks.” Fiona sighed, as she motioned back to Dodd. “Now are you two going to help us or do we have to load him in the van, too?”