A blast of freezing air whipped through the diner as the door opened and the six foot four inch African American Marine veteran walked in from the icy darkness. Ty Johnson stopped for a moment, his gaze sweeping the room. Finally, his stare, colder than the December air outside, settled on the corner booth.
Ty walked over to it, looming over the dandily dressed man pressed into the corner, surrounded by three of his stable of girls.
“Ladies,” said Ty, politely. “If you wouldn’t mind leaving us for a moment.”
One of them made the mistake of looking at Ty.
“Bitch, keep your eyes down,” Monocle chided as she scooted out of the booth. “What the fuck you want?” he said to Ty.
Ty didn’t answer. He reached down a huge hand, and closed it tight around the man’s neck, lifting him directly up, and pushing his head against the wall.
“I want you,” said Ty.
No one in the diner was going to call the cops. Not unless he beat the shit out of this guy right here where people were sipping their coffee. Even then, he doubted it. Not that he had any intention of beating the guy up here.
More than Lock, Ty knew the etiquette of places like this. He’d grown up around them, if not directly in them.
Monocle’s hand reached down, feeling for a weapon. Ty grabbed his wrist with the hand that wasn’t around the man’s throat and snapped his wrist back until he heard a pop.
He fished into Monocle’s waistband and pulled out a knife. He tossed it onto the table and eased the man out from the booth.
Monocle’s feet dangled in the air as Ty lifted him up by the throat, his thumb pressing into his mandibular nerve. As everyone went quiet, Ty set him down, spun him round and shoved him hard towards the swing doors that led into the kitchen.
Moving at speed, he pushed Monocle through the kitchen. The cooks and dishwashers and busboys ignored what has happening. This seemed to be a private matter and as long as no one was killed in their kitchen, it wasn’t really anything that concerned them.
“You’re making a big mistake,” said Monocle, who seemed to have recovered a fraction of his composure.
“Uh-uh,” said Ty, giving him a fresh shove into a narrow corridor stacked with boxes. A stack of boxes tumbling over, drawing a shout from one of the busboys.
“Sorry, fellas,” said Ty. “We’re just leaving.”
Ty grabbed Monocle by the scruff of the neck. He used his head to open the fire door that led out into the alleyway. The sudden appearance startled a couple behind a dumpster, the girl glassy-eyed; the guy dressed in a business suit staring defiantly at Ty.
Returning his stare with interest, the John decided to beat a tactical retreat. Monocle got to his feet, turned around and squared up to Ty, falling back into a boxing stance. He’d just faced the moment that every pimp feared, public humiliation, which was precisely why Ty had done what he had so publicly.
Now, no doubt, Monocle figured that he had nothing left to lose. Ty intended to disprove that theory.
Monocle circled to Ty’s outside, throwing a sharp jab, his rings flashing through the air. Ty kept his feet planted but moved his upper body and head back. He wanted Monocle to stay close, to think that he had a measure of the distance.
As Monocle threw another jab, Ty sunk down, dove forward and wrapped his arms around the top of Monocle’s legs. He picked him up, carried him the short distance across the alley to one of the metal dumpsters and slammed him into the side of it.
He let out a sharp gasp as the air rushed from his lungs and lay there, his back against the dumpster. Ty reached down, grabbed his throat again and swept his legs out so that he was lying flat. Then he knelt a knee on Monocle’s solar plexus.
The impact of the takedown seemed to have taken the last of the fight from him. Ty spoke slowly, keeping his voice low and calm.
“Listen up, you fucked with the wrong people. That can happen. You weren’t to know. So, I’m going to give you one chance to make things right.”
Ty took the man’s right hand and began to yank off his rings, one by one. He drew back his hand, resisting. Ty sunk his knee harder into Monocle’s chest.
“Don’t fight,” said Ty, like he was talking to an errant schoolboy. “Now you are going to tell everything about your buddy Hanger. His real name. What he looks like. Where his crib is? Where else he hangs out? The name of all his girls. Whether he prefers Wheaties or Captain Crunch cereal. You’re giving me the whole nine. And in return, I’m not going to take you somewhere quiet and torture you.”
Monocle looked up at the huge Marine, eyes wide. There was nothing in Ty’s tone to suggest that he wouldn’t make good on his promise.
“Now,” said Ty. “If I can’t appeal to your own sense of self preservation, look at it as a business decision. A smart one. Hanger’s out of the way and you can scoop up his girls. How many has he got? Four, five girls?”
“Seven,” said Monocle.
Ty let out a low whistle. “Seven, huh? Impressive. Obviously, Kristin’s going home, you understand that much, don’t you?”
Monocle nodded without saying anything.
“Good,” said Ty. “So, you get six more girls out there making you money. Think of it as a mergers and acquisitions move.”
“Okay,” said Monocle.
Ty was struggling to slide Monocle’s pinky ring from his finger. It wouldn’t move past the knuckle.
“There’s always one tricky one, isn’t there?” said Ty, reaching into his pocket and producing a pair of small gardening scissors.
Monocle’s pupils widened.
“See if you can get that one off for me, would you?” said Ty.
Monocle grabbed the ring and worked furiously to release it from his finger.
“They ain’t worth anything. Most of them ain’t real diamonds,” said Monocle.
“Don’t you worry about that. You just start telling me what I need to know.”
Ty grabbed his phone and set the voice recording app he had to record.
Monocle started talking. It seemed like once he started, he couldn’t stop. Details spilled from his mouth. As Ty recorded, he started to put some of Monocle’s rings on his own fingers, casually and without explanation. Most wouldn’t go on. He had to take the widest ones and put them on his pinky and ring fingers. The others he discarded.
No one knew Hanger’s real name. Ty accepted that. It wasn’t all that unusual in criminal and general scumbag circles not to know given names. But he did cough up a lot of other intel that they would be able to use.
He prompted Monocle a few times, but ten minutes in he’d gotten the bulk of what he was going to get. He had the street names of the girls who Hanger pimped. He had some of his favorite hang outs. He had one address, an apartment where Hanger sometimes crashed. More than enough to keep them going.
“So?” said Monocle. “We good?”
Ty cocked his head to one side. “Are we good?” he repeated.
“Almost.”
“Hey, man, I told you everything I know. You know what he’ll do if he finds out I snitched. Hanger’s like the devil. He’s pure evil. Different level.”
Ty said nothing.
“You want my rings? Take ‘em. Take my wallet too,” said Monocle.
“There’s one more thing,” Ty said, finally.
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
“This,” said Ty, drawing back his fist and punching Monocle hard in the face.
The prostrate man tried to cover up as Ty pounded punch after punch into his face. When he couldn’t land as well as he wanted, he moved to Monocle’s body. Monocle flailed like a fish on the deck of the boat.
Ty kept going until the man’s was a bloodied, pulped mess and his teeth lay on the ground.
After a while, Ty got up. Slowly he took the rings off one by one and tossed them in the dumpster. Then he knelt down, hauled Monocle up over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and threw him into the dumpster.
Ty walked deeper into the alleyway where his car was already parked. He got in, gunned the engine, and took off, roaring past the dumpster and whipping a hard left turn out onto the street.