– Ah, like a bicycle.
He licks the glue, seals the edge, and passes the smoke to me.
– And the match?
I dig the pack from my pocket, fold one down and under until the head touches the sandpaper, and give it a snap that brings it to light.
– I got that covered.
He nods.
– Useful, should you live for any time at all.
He drops the tobacco pouch into the tacky glaze of my blood that I’m sitting in.
– Unlikely as that may be.
He walks back to the limo and resumes his posture, leaning against the front fender, arms folded at his chest, ankles crossed.
– About that treaty you mentioned. It does not exist.
My hand has stopped bleeding. Stumps scabbed over, scabs drying and falling away, revealing fresh pink scar tissue. The fingers will never grow back. Something like a slender wart might sprout where my thumb was, but that’s at most. And I’d just as soon it didn’t. Cuts in my face feel all healed over. I can brush the dry blood off and find slightly stippled skin. If I don’t move around too much, the ends of my ribs will finish knitting back together. Feels like a couple of them may end up crooked. I can still taste the pepper juice, I reek of it, but my throat and stomach have stopped burning, so that’s OK.
I wonder what it’s gonna be like to punch someone with a fist made out of two and a half fingers.
– Yeah, the treaty, you’ll be negotiating it pretty soon.
– Details.
– Lament is dead.
He looks at his shoes.
– How. Unfortunate.
I take a drag.
– Yeah, that was my reaction.
He looks up from his shoes, long bangs in his eyes.
– Not that you had anything to do with it, I assume.
– Oh hell yes, I shot him a bunch and then I scalped him. Good night’s work.
He pushes the hair off his forehead.
– I would add the killing of another Coalition officer to your record, but it is more than redundant at this stage.
– I’d hate anyone else to get credit for killing the fucker.
– Noted. I can assure you that when morning comes and you are staked out in the sun it will be included on the list of charges proved against you.
He puts a hand on top of the clippers he set earlier on the hood of the limo.
– And this treaty that does not exist, you foresee it for what reason?
I pick more scab from my finger stumps.
– Lament is dead. All his enforcers are dead. The Hood have cleared out the top of the rock. They got nothing distracting them up there anymore. No threat from inside their own border. Digga’s going to clean house. Anyone on opposition. Papa Doc, that mouthpiece you keep up there, I expect Digga already executed him by now. He’s done fucking around. By morning he’ll have a unified front. And he’ll be looking at One Ten, ready to get serious about war. Especially if it will force you to broker an agreement. Official cease-fire, and a resumption of trade.
He touches the tip of one of the shears’ blades.
– They are starving.
– Sure. So they can either fight it out with you and try to expand their borders and their hunting ground, or they can settle and start buying your blood again.
He removes his finger from the blade.
– Digga made it clear he is not interested in our blood.
He looks at me.
– Having learned where it comes from.
My smoke is down to a nubbin. Knowing how hard it’s going to be to get another one rolled, I pinch it like a roach and try to eke a last couple drags.
– We going to cry over spilt milk?
He picks up the shears.
– No. We are not.
He moves from the limo.
– So, you are telling me that Lament is dead, the top of the rock has fallen, Digga is assassinating his opposition in order to prepare for aggressive action along the border, but he is open to negotiating a treaty that he will then break at the earliest convenience.
One of the enforcers slaps the remains of my cigarette from my hand and the others close and I’m pinned again.
Predo cleans some of my dry blood from the blades of the shears.
– All terribly shocking to me. Indeed, how could it be that I did not already know the single most disputed piece of real estate in Manhattan had changed hands? Being only the head of Coalition intelligence, how could that bit of information have slipped past me? Ah, yes, but of course. Because it did not.
He snaps the shears open and closed.
– Truly, Pitt, is that your bid? As if I would not know. As if I could not surmise the rest. Of course we will negotiate a treaty. Of course Digga will plan to break it. But not before we break it first. There are machinations at play, Pitt. Upon whom would you care to place your bet, D.J. Grave Digga or myself?
He makes certain his tie has not become untucked from his shirt.
– Now, regarding that other thumb.
I wrap the fingers of my right hand around my thumb.
– The girl with the baby is inside the Cure house.
He’s at my feet, looking down at the shears in his hand.
– Yes.
He turns away.
– That would give us something of value to talk about.
They keep coming.
SUVs and vans full of them.
Enforcers filling the top level of the garage.
I don’t have nearly enough fingers to count them all. Even very recently I didn’t have enough fingers to count them. Dozens. Over a hundred maybe. The full force. Fewer of the stylish black suits. More coveralls. Black slacks and windbreakers. Sweats. I see four dressed in police uniforms. A team of six in black tactical outfits including body armor, coiling ropes, snapping open carbon-fiber grappling hooks.
Sitting in the corner where they stuck me when the vehicles started rolling up the ramp, I remember something. I remember from the time I was on the Upper East a year ago, when I first came to the Cure house, I remember the parking garage just a few addresses west on the same block.
Lydia’s sense of what the Coalition will or will not shoot up on their own turf appears to be for shit.
I think about that some. Mostly I think about mastering the one-hand cigarette roll, but I think about a shoot-up some as well. There are just too many guns not to think about it a little. Still, the cigarette roll is pretty all consuming. The tobacco I keep spilling isn’t that big a deal, I just scoop it up and try again, but I’ve ripped a lot of papers trying to get this right. Those I’m running low on. Truthfully, it’s not a one-hand roll, it’s more a seven-finger roll. And after about ten shots at it I end up with something I can stick in my face and light on fire. It looks like a crooked Tootsie Roll more than a cigarette, but I can live with it.
I’m making do with that smoke when Predo comes over. He’s still in shirtsleeves, but he’s untucked his tie and gotten rid of the gloves. For now. I’m sure he could be ready to get back to work on my digits at a moment’s notice.
He takes a second to look at a phone one of his boys holds up for him, taps the screen a couple times, nods, and the guy with the phone and the enforcer who’s been watching me back off.
– We will be brief, Pitt.
I take a puff.
– Sure, I can see you have a set piece to coordinate here. Didn’t realize you’d gotten into the action movie business.
He’s not biting today.
– How do you know the young woman is in there?
– Digga’s man, Percy.
– He told you.
– He told me.
– Reliably?
– Dying words.
He ponders that one.
– Quote them.
– Best of my recall, he said they were in the Cure house. Said he sent them there and they sent word back they were inside.
He stops pondering, puts his eyes on me, focusing.
– They sent back word. To the Hood.
– What he said.
He stays on me.
It’s uncomfortable.
Those eyes of his, very old, staring out of that baby face, that skin kept taut and glowing by probably a pint a day. Those eyes have always been hard to meet. And with the years he’s had in the game, he’s seen about every tell any man’s lie can give. He’s sussed out most of my lies before they got past my lips. Half the lies I’ve told him, I got the idea to tell them from him in the first place. Because that’s what he wanted me to do. Sometimes when I talk to the man, I have to look at his fingers, to make sure I’m not wrapped around one of them. He plays me that well. Always has. Only way I’ve ever played him back is with a smart mouth and the truth. And they don’t stack up to much in the game he plays, not with the chips he’s piled on his side of the table.