an easy smile. He stopped in the shade of the office, his head nearly touching the overhang and directly under the gray cat. He stood hipshot and puffed on the cigar. The smell of the smoke and the sight of the kutte reminded me of Pops, and I narrowed my eyes against tears. I couldn’t afford an emotional reaction now. I sipped, waiting for the moisture to dry out in the heat.
He puffed several times. Clenched the cigar in his teeth. Smoke curling up but missing his eyes.
“You say you got a cold one?”
His voice was low and gravely. And his mouth did interesting things around the cigar. If I needed to goad him, I could. He looked like the kind of man who’d be irritated at being accused of getting friendly with another man, and his reaction to the word bugger confirmed it.
“If you’re here to waste my time, no. If you’re a paying customer, cash only, I got beer. Stout.” I flashed a now-smooth fingernail at the beers. “Bottle’s been out of the cold for two minutes, but in a holder, in the shade. It’s still drinkable.” I didn’t hold up the bottle, but I did place a finger on the flip table’s release button.
He didn’t move.
“I might be buying. You the boss?”
“It’s his day off. I’m Smith’s Junk and Scrap’s receptionist and accountant. I can make any deal he can make. Maybe better.”
“Why better?”
“Because I know what bills are due tomorrow. He never looks and wouldn’t care if he did.”
The two fighter cats turned in unison and stared at me, right where my finger was perched on the release button. That meant there was a female directly behind me, watching and transmitting the info to all the other cats. The cats had mad mental skills and they communicated by scent or body language or fricking ESP for all I knew. My neck crawled with near panic. I didn’t like a hungry pride cat behind me. I’d seen them scavenge for protein. It was not pretty.
The Outlaw puffed. Smoke blew out and dissipated. The silence went on too long, as if this was a test. The hairs on my nape lifted despite the sweat and I felt almost cold. Nerves scuttled along my skin like bicolor ants, and my wrist burned, wanting to be used. But he was too far away, thankfully. My heart rate sped. And I blew it.
“You got a handle I can use? Or is Enforcer good enough?”
The man went still as a bot.
Bloody damn. I’d just proved I knew what he was. I lied fast, part truth, part fabrication.
“My mama used to date an Outlaw. He got his teeth knocked out by an enforcer. He deserved it. I never forgot the patch.”
The man waited. Considering. Sucked on the cigar. Smoke curled. It was harsh, stronger than the burned Maltodine stink.
“What’d he do?” he asked at last. “The man your mama dated.”
“He was using cocaine. He beat Mama. He tried to beat me. I hid. Then the enforcer came. We never had that problem again.”
“His handle?”
“Darson. Or as I called him, and all bikers since, Asshole.”
He considered, his eyes tightening as he pulled the name up from a memory Berger-chip. Darson had been given an attitude adjustment when I was ten or eleven. I’d witnessed it. It had been bloody, but the reports said he went through voluntary withdrawal, never used again, and he stopped beating up his old lady and her daughter. They had all been killed in Seattle at the first of the war, right after the Chinese landed. Or, like a lot of records, their reported deaths might have been wrong.
“I’m Jagger.”
“Good name for a pit bull. Gold gets you the best pricing, but cash is good too. What are you buying?”
He didn’t react to being called a dog. “I got cash.” Which said nothing about whether or what he was buying, but my persona would have accepted that.
“You want that beer while it’s cold, you can come over.”
“What’s on the other side of the table?” he asked instead.
I glanced down at my lap. “I’d have expected a better come on from a pit bull named Jagger.”
He smiled. I smiled. He went for the handgun. I flipped the table, ducked, and aimed. He was fast, but he was human, and I wasn’t where I’d been. He was looking down the barrel of the M249 Para Gen II Belt-Fed Machine Gun. The gun’s retrofit auto sights and war-time firing mechanism were trained on