"Oh. Shit. I don't like him."
"Yeah, I picked up on that already."
"Thanks anyway for calling."
"I didn't want you left hanging."
"Hermes is sick with a bad cold, but if you need anything, just buzz me."
"I know I can always count on you."
"No question about it. Later, Tommy Mack."
That ended our conversation. I'd dialed up from an honest-to-goodness phone booth, a dinosaur with the blue top strip and the red bottom panels. Remember once finding them everywhere? No phone directory was chained to the booth, and no calcified chewing gum plugged up the coin slots. The missing door gave me the ventilation to drag on a
Blue
Castle
, my first weed burned in several hours.
In the recent past, I'd contacted the phone company's pay phone division and complained about their shrinking number of booths scattered around the city. Some of us traditionalists liked things kept the old way. The lady's bland voice read their official edict to cease all repair and replacement of the old phone booths such as this one.
God damn cell phones
, I’d groused again.
I legged it back to the coupé. Danny and D. Noble had found my carton of Blue Castles, cracked the seal on a pack, and torched their own smokes. My spent butt flicked away and caromed off a manhole lid. After I took the steering wheel, I fired the coupé's eight cylinders and pumped the gas to rev it. D. Noble sat shotgun, and Danny kept our bulletproof vests and sawed-offs in the rear. The sawed-offs would play our sweet jazz because it didn't blow any hotter than 12-gauge, baby.
"Tonight we'll kick some major ass," said D. Noble. "I feel luckier than Ringo."
"Who's Ringo?" she asked.
"Google it, girl. You'll discover a whole new world out there is waiting for you."
"What's a google?"
"What? Danny, you're a hopeless case."
"Can't you tell she's just messing with you?" I said.
Danny giggled. "Maybe, maybe not."
During our banter, I'd considered a couple of starting points, but none took root in me. My hot impulse to wade in with fists wailing away was the best thing Mr. Ogg could hope for, so I had to tamp down my excitable nerves.
"My main man Ice Cube once rapped, 'If the day does not require an AK, it is good,'" D. Noble spat out the open window. "The only thing is I guess Ice didn't take into account the nights because here we three be."
I'd no clue who his rapper Ice Cube was, nor cared.
"You got any money, Tommy Mack?" asked Danny.
I gave her a curious glance in the rearview mirror. "Enough to buy us doughnuts and coffee for later on. Why do you ask?"
"I've given this some thought,” replied Danny. “The dark suits must be just a gang of capitalists. You can buy them off to your side by paying them a few dollars more."
"Slick and quick. I like it," said D. Noble.
"My bank account is too slim for doing that."
"Can you get your hands on any fast money?" asked D. Noble. “I ain’t got that kind of dough, and Danny isn’t working right now.”
"I don't keep a stake if that's what you're asking me."
"Then who's the weakest link in their outfit?" asked Danny, surprising me with her practical approach.
"Rita Ogg—the older niece—is if I had to pick one."
"I'd go over and ask her your questions," said Danny.
"I tried that over the phone, and she just smart-mouthed off to me."
D. Noble scoffed. "This time we'll tag team her at the business end to our sawed-offs."
"It's worth a try." I braked and made a three-point turn and stopped off just outside the Wegmans per D. Noble’s request.
"Guess what, home slice? You're a local celebrity." He was fiddling with his cell phone and doing some wireless hocus-pocus to surf the Web. "The cops have made you their perp in the Gwen Ogg homicide."
My inquisitor, Detective Sergeant Bang, had delivered on the threats he'd made. New evidence hadn't come to light, but he was not above clearing a homicide in the first 48 by planting a key lead. Cops—homicide dicks had it the worst—were big believers in expediency. The bleary-eyed Bang had pored over the videotape of our interrogation session. Then he pounced on something stupid I'd said and hurried off to see his lieutenant. They colluded, guffawed, and did a low-five hand slap. He inked an arrest warrant charging me with the death of Gwen Ogg, and launching the police BOLO for me. A nauseous quiver stitched in my side.
I steamed off for Rita’s. As the night's velvet deepened about us, the traffic thinned out until the streets lay almost vacant. I picked up the Capital Beltway and slingshotted us around the northern
Virginia
suburbs. The off-ramp I wanted took us away from the speed addicts tearing up the Beltway. Rita lived in one of those new gated villages so popular in upscale suburbia. Forting up there saved the residents from the fallout to a terrorist's dirty bomb. Right. The uniformed sentry at the barred gate marched out into the bright channels to my headlights.
"This detail wasn't mentioned, home slice. It might be a problem."
I lowered my window as the coupé lost speed and fell to a crawl. "I forgot she's holed up behind a castle wall."
"Tell the man we're her poor mouse country cousins."
"He'll call her to verify it, and that blows our chance."
"Danny, pass me a sawed-off, please," said D. Noble. "I'm getting sick and tired of messing with the rent-a-cops."
I spoke, my voice brisk. "Danny, just leave the sawed-offs be."
"You got a better play, home slice?"
"Hush and just go along with me." I braked to a full stop.
"You're the boss," said D. Noble. "For now."
The uniformed sentry yapped out at us. "Resident?"
"No sir. I believe I got turned around and came in by mistake."
"Where are you headed for, bub?"
"Potomac in
Maryland
."
"You gotta backtrack to the Beltway and go north and cross the
American
Legion
Bridge
over the
Potomac River
."
"Thanks." I droned up the window, reversed us out, and left by the same street.
D. Noble grew impatient. "Waste of time."
"Not really. We know Rita lives in a fort, and the gate sentry packs a 9-mm."
"No, it was a Sig 2022 forty," said Danny.
"I stand corrected," I said.
"A pistol-packing rent-a-cop is nothing for us," said D. Noble.
"He wasn't a rent-a-cop but a dark suit. I recognized his voice, but he didn't know me in the dark. He's an out-of-towner from
Baltimore
, and that can only mean Mr. Ogg has brought in reinforcements."
"Reinforcements?" said D. Noble.
"That's why I pulled off back there."
"Go on. How many are we talking now? Give me a round number, and it'd better be less than two digits."
I shrugged. "More than twenty and less than thirty would be my tally."
Danny whistled at the new steep odds we faced.
"It just keeps getting better and better," said D. Noble.
"We'll beef up our ranks," I said.
"Who do we rope in now?" asked D. Noble.
"You told me Esquire is our go-to guy," I replied.
"He’s a fighting ninja, all right. I suppose I can tolerate him in a pinch like now."
"Then raise him on your cell phone and tell him we're en route."
"God damn faggot," said D. Noble.
I frowned at his hostility. "I don't want to hear any more of that. You be nice. We need Esquire's help tonight."
O
ne night earlier this spring, while I was driving home from couriering a package for Mr. Ogg, I pit-stopped at a blue collar bar out on Route 1 near
Mount Vernon
. No special reason sent me ducking through its doorway except my yearn for a stiff pour of gin. The illumination created the sallow tint reminding me of a club where the callow Bird, circa 1940, may've refined his jazz chops on the alto sax.
My bartender, sipping from a PBR he kept hidden under the cash register, was a pinch-faced dude. He sat on a stool as if he was grunting to pass a kidney stone. My gin finished, I was curt. He gave me the damages—cash only—and as I settled up, this lady blundered into the joint.
I did a double take. She was a knockout, literally. Purple and yellow lumped her face as if she'd survived a raw-knuckled nine-rounder. Her gimlet eyes hawking left to right locked on mine. She'd caught me sizing her up, so I gave her a sheepish smile. She didn't smile, as if it doing so was sheer agony, but lunged ahead to grope the edge of the bartop. From observing her minced steps, I suspected fresh welts from a slashing belt buckle marred her legs under the gabardine slacks.
The battered lady's troubles weren't mine, I knew, but her pulped up face evoked my wave of pity, and it goaded me to get involved. In retrospect, it was reckless behavior, but I'd gotten that way more often. Turning age 54 had unleashed my romantic nature that would, in short order, reshape the rest of my life.
She straddled the bar stool I'd just deserted, and I did a self-invite to hoist up on the next one. Aloof as if dazed, she sat shivering. A
Cape
Codder
—vodka poured over cranberry juice with a lime twist—was her poison, and the wizened mixologist obliged her. His glance at me was perfunctory, and I got another shot of gin. I couldn't help but stare again. Talking around the scar tissue muddled her words.
"I'll save you the trouble to ask, mister. He walloped the tar out of me."
"Uh-huh." I gulped down the jigger and signaled the bartender for a refill. "Who is the 'he'?"
"Victor, my husband, that's who."
"Why?"
"He's a surly drunk. That's reason enough."
"I take it this isn't the first time."
She gave a resigning sigh. "Is it a repeat? Yes. Why do I stick with him? Because I'm a ditz with low self-esteem issues. Do I pray he was dead? Nightly."
My smile was a knife slit. "Then tonight, lady, your prayers are answered."
"Don't condescend. And call me Icie, not lady." She scowled at me, or I thought she did. It was difficult to tell from all the knots and abrasions curdling her face. "Who the hell are you? A cop or something?"
"Tommy Mack Zane, hit man."
"Oh, just get out of here.” She pointed a finger at the exit. “Leave me alone."
"Not at all. Let's try this. How much dough have you got on you?"
Humoring me since I wouldn't buzz off, she fished a crumbled fin and sawbuck from her slacks pocket. No purse or wallet lay on the bartop. "After I settle my bar tab plus the tip, this is it."
"Nuts on the tip, and I'll cover your bar tab."
"Now it's my turn to ask you why."
"Because you pay me the fifteen bucks."
"I do, huh. What do I get for that?"
I smiled. "Simple—no more Victor."
"Uh-huh."
"It's true, Icie. Let's say five now and ten after the job. I'll make it appear like a theft turning bloody and rip off his plasma TV or whatever."
"Are you for real?"
"I'm a pro at what I do."
"Careful what you're taking on. Victor makes two of you."
She looked too young for me to use the "Just call me Super Fly" line on, so I said, "Then the harder they fall. Where is he?"
"At home and by now he's deep into his next fifth."
"Did you bail out before tonight's big smackdown?"
"By the skin of my teeth, yeah, I did."