“No,” Mike said. “Youdidn’t ask. You sat there andwhined like a little girl. ‘I’m in trouble, Mike. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do.’ I tookcare of it for you, motherfucker. I stepped up.”
“I thought you were going totalk to him, Mike!” Billy said. “I didn’t think you were going to-”
“Jesus, maybe I shot the wrong fucking guy,” Mike said.
Frank looked back and Mike had a pistol in his hand now. “Mike, no!”
“I think Idid, ” Mike said. “I think I shot the wrong fucking guy! Maybe I should give you what I gave him!”
Georgie Y reached into his pocket for his gun.
Frank cranked the wheel, steered the limo to the curb, and, with his other hand, trapped Georgie’s wrist against his waist. It wasn’t easy-Georgie Y was a strong boy.
Billy was trying to bail out. He was fumbling with the door handle when Mike started shooting. Three blasts made Frank’s ears ring. He couldn’t hear a thing; he just saw Georgie Y’s lips mouthing the wordJesus. Then he turned and saw Billy slumped against the car door, his right shoulder a mass of blood and a bullet hole in his face.
But he was breathing.
Frank jerked Georgie’s pistol away from him, put it in his own pocket, then said, “Come on, I have some towels in the trunk.”
Frank looked around.
No other cars.
No cop cars with sirens screaming.
He got out, opened the trunk, grabbed the towels, then went around to the backseat. “Get the fuck out of my way, Mike.”
Mike got out of the car and Frank slid in. He wrapped towels around Billy’s shoulder and then pressed another hard against the head wound. “Georgie, get in here!” He felt the big man flop onto the seat. “Hold this tight against his head. Don’t let go.”
Georgie Y was crying.
“Georgie, you don’t have time for that,” Frank said. “Do what I tell you.”
Frank got out, grabbed Mike, and pushed him into the front passenger seat. Then he went around, got behind the wheel, and tromped on the gas pedal.
“Where the fuck you think you’re going?” Mike asked.
“The E room.”
“He ain’t gonna make it, Frankie.”
“That’s between him and God,” Frank said. “I think you already did your part, Mike.”
“He’ll talk, Frank.”
“He won’t talk.”
He didn’t.
Billy knew the rules. He knew that if he had been fortunate enough to survive one gunshot to the head, he wouldn’t luck out the second time. So he stuck with the story: He’d been coming out of the club and some junkie tried to rob him. He never saw the guy.
He never saw anything else, either. The bullet hit a nerve and left him permanently blind.
“You’re going to pay him,” Frank told Mike. “Billy keeps his share of the cluband you’re going to cut him in on the shy, like you said.”
Mike didn’t argue.
He knew Frank was right, and besides, Frank always thought that Mike felt bad about shooting Billy, even though he’d never admit it. So Billy still owned the Pinto Club, but he didn’t come around much after he got out of the hospital. Watching strippers couldn’t have been that much fun for a blind guy.
But Billy Brooks kept his mouth shut.
It was Georgie Y they had to worry about.
Mike did, anyway.
“The cops are all over this fucking thing,” Mike said to Frank one night. “They know Billy’s story is bullshit; they’re going to press. You and me, Frank, we can stand up, but I don’t know about Georgie. I mean, can you see him in an interrogation room?”
No, Frank thought, I can’t.
“And thanks, by the way,” he said, “for putting me in the way of an accessory-to-attempted-murder beef.”
“This temper of mine,” Mike said. “So what are we going to do about Georgie?”
“Have the cops contacted him yet?”
Mike shook his head. “It’s the ‘yet’ I’m worried about.”
“We can’t clip a guy on a ‘yet,’” Frank said.
“We can’t?”
“Mike, you do it, I’m done with you,” Frank told him. “My hand to God, I’ll turn my face away from you.”
So Georgie Y kept his life and his job as a bouncer at the club. The only difference was, now he went out and busted legs for Mike instead of for Billy. He even started dating one of the dancers, a skinny little thing named Myrna, and they seemed to get along pretty well.
So that should have been the end of it.
It wasn’t.
The Strip Club Wars were just beginning.
Frank will never forget the first time he saw Big Mac McManus.
Hell, nobody ever forgets the first time they saw Mac. A six-foot-six, 250-pound black man with a shaved head and a cut body comes walking into the place, wearing a tailored leopard-skin dashiki and carrying a diamond-studded walking stick, you tend to remember the moment.
Frank was sitting in a booth with Mike and Pat Walsh when Big Mac strolled in. Big Mac paused on the landing just inside the front door, taking in the scene. More to the point, he let the scene takehim in, which it did. About everyone in the place looked up and stared.
Even Georgie Y was looking up. Big Mac McManus had a couple of inches on Georgie, who seemed to have the sense that he should be doing something, even though he didn’t know what that was. He looked over to Frank for direction, and Frank gave him a subtle shake of the head.
Like, Leave it alone, Georgie. This is out of your league.
Georgie let Big Mac through.
Big Mac descended the stairs into the club.
He had three guys with him. Three white guys.
Frank got the sly joke right away. The black man had an entourage, and they were white.
Mac walked right over to the booth and said, “Billy Brooks?”
“That’s me,” Walsh said.
“Mac McManus,” Mac said. He didn’t offer to shake hands. “I want to buy your club.”
“It’s not for sale.”
“I have controlling interests in the Cheetah, the Sly Fox, and Bare Elegance, to name a few,” Mac said, “I want to add the Pinto to my portfolio. I’ll pay you a fair price, with a generous profit figured in.”
“Did you hear the man?” Mike asked. “He said it’s not for sale.”
“Excuse me,” Mac said, “but I wasn’t talking to you.”
“Do you know who I am?” Mike asked.
“I know who you are, Mike Pella,” Mac said, smiling. “You’re a wise guy who’s done stints for assault, extortion, and insurance fraud. The word is that you’re with the Martini family, but the word is wrong. You’re more of an independent operator with Mr. Machianno here. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Frank. I’ve heard good things.”
Frank nodded.
“Meet my associates,” Mac said. “This is Mr. Stone, Mr. Sherrell, and, last but not least, Mr. Porter.”
Stone was a tall, muscled, blond California dude. Sherrell was shorter, but thicker, with black permed hair that had just gone out of style. Both men were dressed casually, jeans and polo shirts.
Porter was medium height, medium build, his hair cut short. He wore a dark suit, white shirt, and a tie and had a cigarette between lips that otherwise held nothing but a continual smirk. His black hair was greased straight back, and it took Frank a second to figure it out before he realized that the guy was going for the Bogart look. And almost made it, too, except that Bogie had a soft side, and there was nothing about this guy that was soft.
They all nodded and smiled.
Mac took a card from his pocket and laid it on the table. “I’m having a little get-together Sunday afternoon at my place,” he said. “I’m really hoping that you gentlemen can attend. Very casual, very mellow. Bring dates if you’d like, but there will be an abundance of ladies there. Say two o’clock or thereabouts?”
He smiled, turned, and left, with Stone and Sherrell at his heels.
Porter paused, made a special effort to get Frank’s eye, then said, “Nice meeting you blokes.”
“‘Blokes’?” Mike said when Porter had walked away.
“British,” Frank said.
“Check them out,” Mike said.
It didn’t take long to get the rundown.