Johnny looked down at the guy’s hands and made a mental note not to end up on the receiving end of a right hook. It would put him into next week, guaranteed.
“We’ve got company,” Dax said, gesturing at the Escalade being parked at the next dock over.
The fighter looked, and Duce and his boys got out of the big SUV.
“He ain’t s’posed to be here,” the guy said.
“Well, why don’t we let Mr. Bleak tell him that,” Dax said, walking by the fighter and into the warehouse.
The big guy looked even more confused. Then he looked at Esme and his face cleared, like he suddenly remembered what he was supposed to do.
“You,” he said, pointing at her. “You come on inside.”
Asshole. Johnny had his number. He took the last two stairs in one step, hearing Duce and the Locos coming up behind him, and within a couple of minutes, he, Esme, Dax, Duce, two Arañas Locos, and eighty-two thousand dollars were cruising into Bleak’s warehouse.
Baby fucking Duce. Franklin couldn’t believe he was looking at Baby fucking Duce standing in the middle of his warehouse at five o’clock in the morning.
“Yeah, sure, I get it,” he said into his phone, not quite believing what he was hearing coming at him from the other end of this call, either.
There was no justice.
He was screwed.
Goddamn Sparky Klimaszewski was playing hardball to keep Burt Alden in one piece, and Burt Alden was already broken, at least his damn arm if nothing else, and Franklin knew there was something else broken on the guy, probably more than one something else.
But hell, he wasn’t going to tell Sparky that.
“Yeah, sure, I remember, Sparky. I remember how it used to be.” This was all just so goddamn bad. How in the hell had this happened? he wondered. How in the hell had his back gotten shoved so hard up against the wall?
Five guys and a girl-that’s all that had come in through his loading dock, but he’d done nothing but sweat since they’d arrived, and then his phone had rung. Bad news on top of bad news, like the two gangsters with Duce, one of them with vampire caps on his teeth. Geezus. Franklin had heard a few things about the Arañas Locos, the Crazy Spiders, and none of it was good.
“Sure, Sparky. There’ll be no heat on the guy. Once I’m clear with a guy, I’m clear with him, you know that.”
Goddamn Sparky. How in the hell had the chop-shop king of Denver gotten into his deal? What the hell was Burt Alden to Sparky Klimaszewski? Some long-lost brother or something?
And Duce, goddamn Baby Duce wanted a cut of the deal, of the cocaine, and if Franklin didn’t deliver, things were going to happen-bad things, to him, personally, with Duce throwing him to the Parkside Bloods.
Old news, now, and Duce didn’t know it, but he and the Bloods were going to have to get in line behind Sparky Klimaszewski if they wanted a piece of Franklin ’s ass. Sparky, Duce, Bloods, the Chicago boys, the guys from New Jersey -hell, he needed a goddamn dance card to keep track of everyone who wanted a piece of him. If he lived ’til Christmas, it would be a miracle.
Baby Duce, the two Arañas, Johnny fucking Ramos, Esme Alden, and “the cousin”-five guys and a girl, that’s all he was looking at, and he was in it up to his eyeballs.
Franklin had six guys at his back, six mean sons-a-bitches packing plenty of hardware, and he was still sweating. Johnny Ramos, who had screwed the whole deal for him in the first place, didn’t look like he’d be all that damn easy to kill, and if that wasn’t bad enough, the damn cousin Esme Alden had brought with her looked like he could drop them all on a dime. Dax was his name, and Franklin didn’t know what in the hell kind of name that was.
The only damn bright spot of the whole damn morning was Esme herself.
Dovey was such an idiot. He’d gotten it all wrong, and the photos Franklin had seen simply had not done the young woman justice.
She was exquisite-fine-boned, elegant, gorgeous, classy, every square inch of her, and stupid him, he’d already made his deal with Rollo.
Hell, he could get a fortune for her in this certain Middle Eastern market he had done business with a few times. He needed to think this through, figure out the win for himself. With the eighty-two thousand to finish his cocaine deal, and the girl, he could come out okay.
That’s all he needed, half a million dollars’ worth of cocaine with a ready market in Aspen and Vail, and one drop-dead gorgeous girl worth ten times those two young whores he’d sold five years ago. By the time he unloaded all that, he’d be sitting back on top. Of course, from the looks of things, he’d need to be sitting someplace other than Denver.
Goddamn cocaine.
Keep your head down, lay low, work your bets- those were his rules, and he’d broken them all for a damn drug deal and a shot at Katherine Gray, who wasn’t going to find him all that damned intriguing if he was dead.
He needed to put Rollo off, that was all. Offer him more money if he’d wait until the coke was delivered and sold. Hell, that’s all he needed to do, hold everything together until he could get the coke sale money in his coffers.
Of course, he was running a tight margin on the cocaine sale, damn tight, what with the exorbitant interest rates charged by the Jersey guys, and having to buy off Duce, and now to buy off Rollo.
But damn Sparky didn’t want cash or cocaine. Damn Sparky wanted Burt Alden.
“That’s old news, Sparky. Nobody cares about two runaway whores who disappeared off the face of the earth five years… well, yeah… sure, Sparky, the cops care, but nobody is going to be dragging the cops into our business, are they?”
Klimaszewski was insane. Nobody in their right mind would drag the cops down on Commerce City just to save Burt Alden.
“That’s a bad decision, Sparky. I mean it. You-” Sparky interrupted him, and Franklin listened with growing unease-hell, as if he wasn’t uneasy enough.
This lawyer guy Klimaszewski was talking about was no good. Franklin bent his head into the phone, holding it closer. Sparky couldn’t really be serious about dragging this guy up out of the past. One dead lawyer who had been into cheap whores, big bets, and premium cocaine, who had bought the farm one night in kind of a gruesome manner, and Sparky was going to hold that over his head?
Nobody could tie Franklin to that deed-but the more Sparky talked, the more uneasy Franklin got.
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” he said, reaching the end of his rope-like he needed blackmail on top of every other screwup he’d had to contend with tonight. “My guy is counting the cash now. If it comes up right, Alden is off the hook. I won’t touch him. He can walk away.”
In theory, Burt Alden could walk away, but only in goddamn theory. In truth, Alden hadn’t budged since Eliot had dropped him on the betting-room floor.
Franklin turned and looked halfway down the length of his warehouse, where Esme and her knights in shining armor were waiting for him to accept payment and clear the debt. Shifting his gaze to Dovey, he watched the kid count the last of the bills out of the duffel.
When Dovey gave him the “okay,” he made his decision-he would roll over for Sparky. Burt had already had the crap beat out of him. Nothing was going to fix that, except a trip to the hospital, but if he handed the guy over, that’s where his buddies would take him. Sparky Klimaszewski didn’t make idle threats. Guaranteed, by this time tomorrow, if Burt Alden didn’t get put back together, the Bleak warehouse was going to be swarming with cops looking to hang the guy who had offed one lousy lawyer and sold two whores.
Christ. Like the world didn’t have enough lawyers and whores. Sure, he and Eliot had gone a little overboard with the lawyer guy, but so what? What was one lousy lawyer in the scheme of things?
“Sure, Sparky. I’m reading you, and we’re clear.” Clear as mud. “My guy kind of wrenched Alden around a bit, but I’m gonna take care of that right now. If I’d known he was important to you, I’d have told Eliot to be more careful with him. But you know how these things happen… sure, sure, Sparky. Alden won’t see my guys again. Hands off. Right.”