“Feeling down, bud?” It was a soft voice, coming from out of the darkness behind me.
“Not me, I’m high as a kite,” I said.
“Oh yeah? Looks to me like someone took the wind out of your sails. But you know, I just might be able to help.” A figure stepped out of the shadows. A small man in a large, grey cloak, he fidgeted and twitched with the nervous energy of a flea.
“You can help me all right. Just tell me what sort of place is this that a man can’t get into a club without ID?”
“ID you say? Well it’s lucky you’ve found me, because it just so happens that IDs are my specialty.” He extracted a small cardboard rectangle from a pocket within his cloak and held it up in front of me.
“Guaranteed to get you into any club anywhere.”
I took a look. It seemed to be legit. I nodded.
“I’m so glad I could help you,” said the man. “That will be six thousand diablos.”
“You haven’t helped me much,” I said, doing a quick calculation in my head. “I’ve only got four thousand diablos left.”
“Okay,” he said. “How about we compromise. Let’s make it four thousand diablos.”
“Come on. A man in a club needs cash. I’ll give you two thousand.”
“Three thousand, five hundred.”
“Two thousand, five hundred.”
The little man thought for a moment, then grinned. “You got yourself a deal.”
I took out thirteen notes and handed them to him. He took the notes and handed me the ID.
“I’ll just get you your change,” he said. But as he reached into his cloak, he let out a sudden gasp and fell forwards onto me. I reached out to grab him, allowing him to wrap his arms around my waist to steady himself. He caught his breath and thanked me, then promptly disappeared back into the shadows. It was only a couple of seconds later that I thought to check my pockets. As expected, I had fallen for the oldest trick in the book. The envelope with the remaining diablos was gone.
I placed the ID in my pocket and walked back into the rain, a crazed grin on my face. I was in Hell, flat broke, soaked to the bone, and with no idea what I was supposed to be doing here. But what did that matter? I had ID.
Music throbbed out through the walls of the first nightclub I found, making the whole street vibrate. I strode confidently to the door where, right on cue, another oversized gorilla in an undersized suit jumped into my path and demanded ID. I smiled at the great ape, calmly took the ID from my pocket, and handed it to him. He stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment. Then he turned back to me.
“Is this meant to be some sort of joke?”
“Not at all,” I said. “Now will you please let me through? I have ID.”
“This is not ID,” the bouncer growled, and he held up the card for me to see. Whatever had once been written was now smudged beyond recognition by the rain.
At that moment, something inside me snapped. I lunged at the bouncer, attempting to grab him by the throat. He just laughed, picking me up as if I were a sack of feathers and swinging me roughly from side to side. I tried to fight him off, pummeling him with my fists for all I was worth, but I made as much impact as a single raindrop on a bone-dry desert.
An excited crowd gathered outside the nightclub to watch the show. Like a mob of jackals, they could sense that someone was about to get hurt. And we all knew it wasn’t going to be the bouncer.
But suddenly, the crowd pulled away. The bouncer slowed his swinging, then dropped me to the ground and took a couple of steps back.
“Is there a problem here?” said a voice that sounded strangely familiar.
I looked up. A figure stood over me. It was a tall guy with sandy brown hair. He had a solid build and a neck like a rhino.
It was my old friend, Bully Malone.
Chapter 12
I STARED AT BULLY MALONE. Bully Malone stared back at me. At least here was one mystery solved―my gunwork outside that Girl Scout hall had been more effective than I’d given myself credit for. It looked like I’d taken Bully out for good. Not that it helped me much now.
“I asked if there was a problem here,” Bully repeated. He spoke softly but his voice was hard, like a satin veil on a pile driver.
“No problem here, Mr Malone,” the bouncer said. “Just trying to keep undesirables out of the club.”
“Well, it just so happens that this particular undesirable is with me,” said Bully. “So are you going to let us both in, or do I have to get you to do a little dance first?” He took out a gun and pointed it at the bouncer’s feet.
“Right away, Mr Malone, come this way.” The bouncer stepped away, ushering Bully towards the door like a game show hostess pointing to a new car. I felt Bully’s powerful hand come down on my shoulder, and before I knew it, I was lifted up and pulled through the door into the darkness of the club.
The room was small but crowded. All heads turned towards us as we entered, and all conversation suddenly ceased. Even the band stopped playing and promptly left the stage. In the short time since his death, Bully had clearly wasted no time making himself known to the residents of Hell.
Bully dragged me along a hastily cleared path towards a table in the back corner of the club. He made a small movement with his gun, and the couple who were seated at the table quickly stood up and disappeared into the crowd.
“Just my luck. One table free,” said Bully. “Why don’t you take a seat and we can have a friendly little discussion?” He pointed towards one of the recently vacated chairs with his gun. It looked like this discussion was going to be as friendly as a pre-dinner chat between a goldfish and a piranha.
I sat down. I can’t say I was thrilled at the idea of spending the evening with the man who had murdered me, and whom I had, in return, dispatched to Hell. But it didn’t look like I had much of a choice. If there was going to be a discussion, I decided it would be better if I set the agenda.
“Okay, Bully, I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “But try to look at it from my point of view. I had a job to do. It wasn’t a job I particularly wanted, but a fellow in my position can’t afford to be choosy. So when I suddenly see you coming out of that Girl Scout hall with a semi-automatic pointed at my forehead, what else was I supposed to do? I didn’t want to shoot you, Bully, but you didn’t give me much of a choice.”
“Don’t think you can talk your way out of this one, Clarenden,” snarled Bully. “I don’t care what you say. You killed me. You, a lousy little nobody, killed me, the meanest, toughest hit man in town. I don’t like that, Clarenden. It’s not good for my image. So what do you think I should do about it?” As he spoke, he slowly lifted the gun until it was pointing at my chest.
“What difference does it make what you do about it,” I snapped back. “It isn’t going to make you any less dead, is it.”
“Maybe not, but it will make me feel a whole lot better.” Bully raised the gun further, so it was now pointing at my face. “So let’s hear you talk. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t blow you to—”
“What are you going to do, kill me a little bit more?” I interjected. Bully looked at me blankly, his mouth wide open as if he hoped to catch a fish in it. Emboldened by his obvious confusion, I kept talking. “We’ve reached the end of the line, you and me. There’s nowhere left for you to blow me.”
Bully still looked puzzled, but he lowered the gun. “Okay, you got me there. But let me tell you, I can still make Hell a pretty unpleasant place for you.”