hit the fan at the hospital.
Man, you got it bad.
Fuck me, that little thief is gonna suffer.
Over the next two hours that crawl by, I get up to drain the lizard twice in the john and nurse my drink as slowly as I can while keeping one eye on the battered-looking door. Randal doesn’t push me to finish with the drink and buy another. He knows I’m not here for the night’s entertainment, and that the drink is only to blend in.
Can’t afford to get buzzed. Need to stay sharp.
Another hour snails by. I light up again. It’s almost eleven. Boredom starts to set in, and mixed with the screeching music and the stink of shitty cigarettes, it’s the dangerous kind that threatens to numb my senses, reducing me to a weapon dulled with lack of use.
Halfway through my smoke, the battered door finally opens and the poker players spill in from the basement. The last one shuts the door and they head for the outside, a couple of them lighting up cigars. One of them has a girl on his arm, and he already has his tongue down her throat.
My senses immediately go on alert. All of them are in fancy monkey suits, the youngest one, who has the girl, is at least ten years my junior. The oldest probably has a few years on me. I catch the glint of gold and diamonds on one wrist. High rollers, but none of them is Jamison.
This is going to be more complicated than I thought. Good thing I know the younger one.
I stab out my smoke and start for the back door, though moving slowly enough to let the men get outside without noticing me.
Outside, three of the men have walked down the alleyway toward the street, perhaps deciding to hit another club. Only the younger one stays behind. He’s a few feet away from the door, and he has the girl pinned against the fence beside the wall with her back to him. He has her skirt pushed to her waist and he’s in the middle of pulling down the back of her panties, ignoring her attempts to push him off. She cries out and he covers her mouth.
My fists clench. Stupid fuck. He just made my job easier.
Unwilling to draw his pals back here, I wait until they’re out of sight before I make my move. I have the guy by the back of the neck before he even knows I’m there.
“Hey! What the fuck, man—”
I spin him around to face me and shove him against the fence hard enough to rattle it.
“Hello, Lenny.”
His eyes shoot to my face and his cheeks lose all color. He has spiky hair kept in place with too much gel and a face like a weasel. “Spidy. Jesus Christ.” He’s tried to be casual, as if we’re old friends, but the sound he makes is high and whiney with panic.
The girl has obviously never seen me before. She’s flattened herself against the fence, hiking her skirt back into place. She’s also staring at me with huge dark eyes. Her nearly awestruck expression make me think of a woman in one of those superhero flicks Rat’s obsessed with, where the vigilante lets the girl run off before he kills the attacker.
The look annoys me. I’m no hero.
“Get gone,” I growl at her, keeping my fist around the front of Lenny’s fancy shirt.
She scurries off and the heavy door slams behind her.
“Hey,” Lenny spits, losing his bad attempt at friendliness. “I paid for that. You just cost me half a grand.”
“Sucks to be you,” I growl. I let him see my grin before I pin him to the fence and grab his collar with both hands.
“What the fuck do you want?” he snaps, grunting in pain.
“I want information, and you’re going to give it to me.”
“Sure, whatever, man. You don’t have to break my back for it. I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about shit going down. There’s some new fat cat whose looking for a fuck ton of firepower. Throwing a lot of money around. There’s chatter about some issue with the Circuit too. A couple of the stopping points have been compromised. Merchandise has been lost. And there’s a whole lot of talk about the Bastards being out for your blood because you took out the Prez’s brother. Everyone’s talking about that one, man.”
I quickly catalogue this information in my head, working out the underlying implications. I have no idea who