"I have business here."
"What business?"
"None of yours. But it's business that would best be conducted without your dumb ass raining gunfire and stupidity all over the place." I rapped him on the back of his head hard enough to just hurt him and knock that stupid Yankees cap off.
His breaths were becoming ragged. "You gonna kill me, then kill me." His voice was becoming thick, but not with fear.
Suddenly, I recognized the kid, knew why he was there.
Or, more accurately, I recognized his features. He looked just like his sister, the one who had been in the newspapers a couple weeks back. The one who used to work for Elvis taking coats at his club when she wasn't removing the rest of her clothing at the Blue Ruby. I'd read about the vicious drunken assault that happened inside the strip club. Heard more detail on whispered lips in the dark places I frequent. Whispers about who had done it to her and how she was too scared to point a finger.
"I'm not going to kill you. I'm giving you a chance to walk away here. I know what Elvis did to your sister. I know-"
"What do you know. What the fuck do you know, man?" he cried as he started turning towards me.
I moved the barrel over his eye, blocking his vision as I slid to my left, keeping out of his sight line. I didn't need any accidents that a panicking overemotional kid could easily cause. "Uh-uh-uh. You just face out, kid." Tears slid down his cheeks, rolled down the gunmetal.
"He's gotta pay, man. He's gotta pay…" he mumbled, more to himself than me as he turned his eyes back onto the door of the club.
"He is, but let the courts do their thing." The statement felt ludicrous coming out of my mouth, considering I had a gun to his face.
"You can't be serious. A man as mobbed up as Elvis Maxwell?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying. The Feds have been itching for something to put him away for."
"And you think that they're gonna care about some spic stripper he raped? He kills people. I ain't stupid."
"You are if you think he's gonna let you get within fifty feet of him without killing you first."
"Then what? He just going to get away with it?"
I thought about myself. All of my sins. My history of getting away with precisely that. "Nobody gets away with it in the end."
"That's bullshit, man. And you know it."
I didn't know if it was or it wasn't, but I said, "What isn't bullshit is that cab coming down the street. That's the cab that you're going to hail and go home in. Your sister needs you. She's got enough to deal with without her little brother dead from some half-assed attempt at payback. Be there for her." I stuffed a twenty into his coat pocket. "If you turn around, I put bullets in your spine. Got it?"
He sniffed and nodded his head low. "Got it."
"Now pick up your stupid hat and go home."
He opened the door and stuck his hand out. The yellow cab pulled up and he climbed in, never looking back. I waited until the taillights cornered Broadway before I got out of the car and strolled over to Elvis's. The club wouldn't be open yet, so I buzzed the bell by the huge metal door.
A Dominican guy with a shaved head and a neck thicker than the head opened the door. His other hand slid to his side, just out of vision, but at the ready. Very professional. He turned his huge neck, looking up and down the street. "Hey T.C."
"What's going on, Jesus?"
"That dummy in the Yanks cap split?"
"Yeah," I said. I looked at Jesus straight. "Benji called me. Said Elvis needed to see me."
"Elvis is waiting on you upstairs."
"Gotcha." Jesus did some freelance for Benji, just like I did. Benji was probably who assigned him the bodyguard detail on Elvis in the first place.
We eyeballed each other for a second. Professional respect and challenge in both our eyes. Two Alpha dogs who would forever wonder which one was Beta until such time they met in a pit. "We cool?" I asked.
Jesus shrugged his huge shoulders. It looked like boulders shifting under Armani. "Ain't no thang. Benji gave me the 411."
I walked past him, down the crimson velvet covered walls. Thumping dance music reverberated down the corridor. I turned left at the end and saw Elvis Maxwell sitting alone in a leather booth. He had on a purple wool suit and a white shirt, open at the collar. All he needed was a gold medallion and he would have looked like a disco lizard, time-warped from 1979.
He saw me and lifted a remote. The techno music cut off abruptly. The annoying bass line echoed in my ears for a couple seconds.
"Tee-SEE!" he yelled, my name echoing through the spacious emptiness. For a man who cherishes anonymity as much as I do, hearing my name not only yelled, but echoing, made the hair on my neck rise. He opened his arms wide, a brandy snifter in his hand, amber liquid sloshing at his gesture.
"Elvis," I said, considerably softer.
Elvis slicked his oily hair back with his fingers before he offered his handshake. Despite my disgust, I took it. The grease rolled around my fingers like I'd just eaten a cheap slice of pizza.
He popped a thin brown cigarette between his thin lips directly from the pack, then offered the pack to me.
"No thanks." I did want one, but couldn't stomach the thought of his lips touching one of the filters that might touch mine.
He shrugged. "Your choice. It's become decadent to smoke in my own fucking bar. You believe that? I can't even smoke in my own place?" He swirled the cognac in affectation before he tossed what remained down his gullet. "You have any idea how much money I put into this motherfucker? Next thing you know, they'll say you can't drink in a bar." He poured himself another healthy dollop of Frapin from the bottle out on the table. He chased the seven hundred dollar bottle of liquor with a can of Red Bull. Classy guy all the way.
"Times have changed."
"Ain't that some shit? Christ, just remembering when you could smoke in a bar makes me feel like a dinosaur. Who knew fucking Bloomburg would make Giuliani look like Caligula. During Rudy's days, I was still doing lines off of Ford Model titties. Now I can't even light a fucking Camel? Ain't that some shit?"
"Like I said. Times have changed." I sat down opposite him at the table. "So, what happened?"
He dismissed my question with a wave. "That's not important. What is…"
I interrupted him. "Actually, it is."
He glared hard at me. He wasn't used to being interrupted or challenged on what he considered to be his own turf. Thing about fuckwits like Elvis? They never seem to get that the turf they considered "theirs" was only due to the grace of God and the people who employ me. "You're kidding me, right?" His tone indicated that I might be.
I wasn't. I went on. "Do you know how money much the Gayden sisters have in The Blue Ruby?"
"C'mon, T.C., that run down little nudie bar?"
"Exactly. It's run down for a reason. The Yuens move a sizeable amount through there too."
"I know." He huffed a humorless laugh. "So imagine my surprise when that little spic whore calls the cops. She works here for me, playing the cockteasing princess in a mini-skirt. I go to Blue Ruby, and there she is, naked as a jaybird. She's cock hungry enough to take my money, to walk me into the fucking Champagne Room and rub her cootchie all over my cock, then she's gonna bitch when Lil' Elvis comes out to play?"
"She said you raped her, beat her after the lapdance."
"That's not the point."
"What is then?"
"I need you to take care of her. That's why I called Benji. Benji calls you. You getting my drift?" His attitude was shifting from appreciative to smarmy. A little man with a little power.
"Nobody wanted the police poking around The Ruby. You should have known better."
He stood up sharply, red impatience creeping up his neck. "You listen to me, and you listen to me right now. You are hired fucking help and no more. I ain't paying for your fucking opinion on what I do and do not fucking know. You hear me?" Two fingers curled around the snifter, stabbing his anger at the air in front of me.