Too Wylde (6 page)

They both laughed hard and long.

"I would think...a public service, my friend.
We do endeavor to serve the public, and serve the public well."

"Public, this is close to pubic?"

"In spelling only. It's a good thing we don't
gamble on crosswords in here."

"Yes. Though that does give me an
idea..."

"I don't know if I can afford any more
ideas!"

"We will let that germinate. You know this
word?"

"Yes," Lance said, grinning. "This word, I
know."

He watched the third most senior Laotian
gangster in Lake City walk out the door, sat back, put his
Ferragamo shod feet up on his desk (carefully, so as not to disturb
the shine on his shoes or the walnut desk top) and considered his
day. So much to do in The Trojan Horse: audition some new dancers
pleading for a shot? Long lunch downtown with the Chief of Police?
Spot check both sets of books? Or maybe just a long excellent
cigar, a glass of Macallan, and take the rest of the day off?

It was good to be Lance T.

Maybe the gym. The fighter he was and always
had been clamored for some expression, though these days he spent
most of his fighting time boxing for fun. His wrestling days had
left him with the ripped physique and a bevy of old injuries;
boxing gave him a chance to work hard on something he'd always
admired and never tried; it was always good to be a beginner at
something.

The gym.

***

Rudy's Gym looked like it had been plucked
right out of a 40's noir movie. Stained ancient wooden flooring,
racks of duct taped bags, boxes of sweat blurred gloves and hand
wraps, jump ropes hanging from pegs. The sweet familiar smell of
old sweat, sweat expended in honest effort, the creak of the canvas
mat in the ring, the clink of the ropes. Young men, and a few
women, in various corners shadow boxing, working the speed bags to
a steady rat tat tat, a few of the old timers, still cut hard
though greying, chatting in the corner, nodded at Lance when he
came in.

He nodded back, one fighter to another,
changed in the locker room, the old wooden bench bowed by many
years, slammed the rusty locker shut and went out to warm up with a
few rounds of jump rope.

Rudy, the second generation of Rudy's to own
and run this gym, was a black densely muscled former champion kick
boxer who'd taken over the gym from his father; a longish stint in
Korea and Japan as a pro fighter had left him with a little money
and a lot of injuries, so it was time to work the gym, coach a few
fighters, and work on nurturing the next generation of
warriors.

"Lance," Rudy said.

"Hey, brother. How's it?"

"Good. You?"

"Never better."

Rudy laughed. "I guess not. It's good to be
Lance T. You looking for a partner today?"

"Maybe later. Jump some rope, do some bag
work."

"You want to work mitts, let me know. I got a
new guy working off some of his fees."

"Who's that?"

Rudy inclined his head towards the corner of
the gym, where a tall, heavily muscled man with long black hair
tied back in a ponytail worked a heavy bag.

"That's him," Rudy said.

Lance studied the fighter. Streaks of grey in
his hair, no kid there, but seriously fit, with the dense muscle of
someone who worked at it, watched his diet as well, when you get
older it's not just the workout, it's what you put into the
machine, skilled, too, boy was making the bag hum, and each of
those punches was putting a dent in a 100 pound heavy bag. That's
what set a serious puncher off from the newbies and wannabes; a
newbie hits the bag and watches it swing, a serious puncher hits it
and watches it fold. Footwork was there, and the leans and bobs of
someone who'd been on the receiving end more than once.

"I'll check him out later," Lance said.

He went to a corner and worked his leather
rope, made it sing, a not inconsequential thing for an athlete who
went over 200, worked his footwork drills, and kept himself to an
honest 3 minute round each time, which left him drenched in sweat
and feeling fine.

And he noticed the new guy noticing him.

Lance was a player, and had been for a long
time. He'd bounced, done a few other things when he was young and
needed the money. These days he kept his business away from the
hands on end of things, but working in a club, and especially
owning one, kept his radar cranked up high. He was getting pinged
pretty heavy by the new guy.

What's up with that?

He thought about it while he toweled down.
Alpha males have this thing, especially alpha males of the fighter
type. They make each other pretty quickly, as part of their
never-ceasing situational awareness, and they size each other up,
and if there is *any* question about who's dominant over who, the
testing process proceeds. It starts with a look, and takes off from
there.

Lance grinned to himself.

So be it.

He looked over, caught New Guy's eye, nodded,
got a nod back. Went over and stuck out his hand.

"I'm Lance. Rudy says you're willing to work
with an old guy and run some mitts?"

The new guy grinned. "I'm Nico. You don't
move so old, Old Guy. What did you do?"

"Wrestled a little bit."

"Little bit."

"Yeah."

Nico grinned. "Sure, I'll run the mitts for
you. Let's go."

Nico took two focus mitts off a shelf, laced
them onto his hands, slapped them together. "Working anything in
particular?"

"Jabs and crosses to warm up."

"Rounds or whatever?"

"Keep it honest. Rounds."

"Cool."

Nico hit the timer with the edge of his mitt,
moved in front of Lance, bobbed lightly on his toes. Lance worked
his jab, taking his time, getting the sharp pop of a good hit and
then crossing with that right hand, boom, that would take the lead
out of some boy's pencil. Nico dropped one mitt and swooped it
around in a looping hook, and Lance ducked under it, came up, jab
cross.

"Nice," Nico said. "Pick it up?"

"Yeah."

Pace and contact picked up. The two big men
circled each other. Nico probing with different hands, varying the
height and distance, a pro who'd been on both sides, and Lance
tagging them good and solid, every once in awhile Nico's hook
slipping him, just clipping his head to let him know he was out
there --

-- and it picked up some more, the steady pop
pop pop of the mitts, Lance mixing it up now, combinations, and
Nico going with the flow, moving around each other, amping it up
just a bit --

-- and the other fighters stopping to watch,
two big combat athletes going at it, the intensity starting to amp
even higher --

-- Nico slapping Lance hard on the face with
a mitt, straight up challenge --

-- and the immediate response from Lance,
blasting forward with a series of crosses, right left right left,
driving the man back, Nico just a bit smaller than Lance, and
feeling the wrestler's desire to close with and grapple, so he just
stepped to one side...

-- and tagged Lance lightly on the side,
kidneys, back of his head, as the wrestler plowed past, and then
Lance turned, fast, followed him...drove him back against the wall
with a solid thump...

-- and Nico's face shifted and he came
forward onto his toes...

-- and Rudy said, "Nico..."

Nico grinned, raised his hands. "Good shot,
Chief."

Lance's chest heaved as he caught his breath.
Found that he really did have some anger up -- the fighter's anger.
And then he grinned and said, "I owe you a drink. Come by my place
some time."

"Where's that?"

"The Trojan Horse. Down in E Block."

"Sounds good."

They broke off, appraised each other.

Grinned.

Fighters love fighters.

Dee Dee Kozak and Neo Dark God, aka Kiki
Warren

St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception was the
oldest Catholic church in Kansas City, Missouri, and the attached
school was one of the oldest. Every day hundreds of neatly
uniformed boys and girls, K-12, they had it all here including a
pre-school that fed the kids well prepped into the education (and
tuition) flow. Underneath the neat blue shirts and shorts of the
boys, and the white shirts and plaid skirts of the girls, though,
beat the same hormone inflamed fantasies of any other group of 21st
century pre-pubescents and enraged adolescents.

One of the girls hurried along, 13 or 14,
with the angular up tilted shoulders of someone who might spend too
much time on the computer, a book bag slung over her shoulder,
blond kinky hair, the kind the nuns shook their head at, her figure
just barely budding and hinted at beneath the bland uniform.

Meet Kitten June Warren. No shit, her mom
loved cats, probably more than she loved her only child, so she
named her Kitten, but no kid who'd endured
that
name in the vicious arena of the schoolyard would
stick with it (
here Pussy, Pussy, Pussy, hey Kitten where's your
litter box...
) so when she could, she reinvented herself as
KiKi Warren, aka Neo Dark God in hacker-dom, where a girl with a
certain bent of mind, a deep pocketbook courtesy of her mother's
carelessness with credit cards and bank accounts, and a deep and
abiding desire to be
somebody
could make a
name for herself.

Her first gig was skimming debit and credit
cards; she had to find a way to make ends meet while scooping ice
cream for the spoiled bitches who came wandering into the upscale
little gelato store; man, she'd skimmed a
whole
lot of account numbers, and had been careful with
the attention to detail of a seriously committed criminal to not
take too much, small purchases, advances, and transfers to a series
of accounts from which she drew out enough cash to buy gift cards,
no questions asked, and at this point she had probably close to
$70K stashed underneath her bed, where mama never looked since KiKi
did her own laundry, bless her heart, and then a significant amount
drawn out of ATMs, enough to purchase several high quality custom
boxes and the software and peripherals to go with them, and mama
didn't care if she spent all that time on the computer, because she
had great grades because of it, even though she did all her math on
Wolfram Alpha and bought essays off the Net, she was too busy
making bank to fuck around with school work, and it was pretty easy
to stay on top of things when she hacked into the school network
and downloaded all the tests, essays, homework assignments and
reading...and over a week of vacation prepped everything into a
neatly ordered file that she plucked the work from on a weekly
basis.

Life was good.

But oh boy, did she like working with Double
D Bodacious. A woman, for sure, and an alpha wolf in the
underworld. She'd had some fun -- moved money around for her,
introduced her to the gift card scam for portable cash, massaged
some digital money through the back door banking operations run by
the Muslims and the Hispanic gang members to get money off shore
and back, even worked out a deal to get her some gold coins
delivered. This was KiKi's career track -- finance. Wave of the
future, looting failed banks -- hell, failed countries! -- and
moving it around to her benefit.

She hurried off the library and its wi-fi so
she could enter a VPN she'd set up to work from a remote server she
leased in Romania, and do what she needed under proxy.

She loved girl talk, and Double D Bodacious
would have advice for her. There was a dance coming up, and a boy
she wanted to ask her. Or at least he'd better ask her, or she'd
hack his Facebook and put fag pictures on it.

She set up on a corner table, waved to some
of the girls she took math with (fellow math nerds) and set up her
cover screen, which was from top to bottom filled with programming
code, so it looked like an extra credit project for Computer
Science.

Set.

She opened a new window in Linux and went to
work, connected through her VPN and waited till the icons showed
she was secure, run through 7 proxies culminating in her Romanian
server, checked her private bulletin board/mail service, again run
through a proxy from both Hushmail and Cryptoheaven, and saw the
blinking icon that said: Double D Bodacious sends you
greetings...and an attachment.

KiKi opened it up, let her eyes run down the
lines of code, the routing numbers, the bank names, and stamped her
feet in giddy excitement -- ooooooohh. This was *the* big leagues!
And most important -- major league fun!

She typed out her reply....

***

Dee Dee Kozak looked at her iPhone and saw an
encrypted message come through. Grinned, opened it.

"Friend girl? We have contact," she said.

Irina stared sullenly across the table at
her. "I want to go out."

"Go ahead."

"It is not safe alone."

"I charge extra for that."

"I have made you rich. And you have done
nothing."

"Only saved your life, bitch," Dee Dee said
genially. "But hey, you wanna go out, we can go out. I could use a
rack of chicken tacos myself."

"I want different clothes."

"You need to lose the Eastern European hooker
look, honey. Just saying. You draw more attention than we need, not
that man-attention is generally a bad thing, I'm fond it myself,
but right now a little lower profile would be good."

"What do you suggest?"

"For you? Hmmmm...." Dee Dee said. "Maybe a
little urban hillbilly or wandering cowgirl might be good. You
could still wear the skin tight jeans, show off your ass and legs,
but we could break it up with a big shirt, just hint at those boobs
of yours."

"I am not a cow herder. I will not dress like
one."

"Hello Cowgirl in the sand...is this place at
your command..." Dee sang softly.