"I respect a man's domicile," I said, wearing the disguise of language. "That's why I am standing on the sidewalk."
"In my fuckin' driveway, motherfucker," he corrected.
By now he was almost upon me-his mistake. The ten or twelve pounds of stainless steel would be of little use to him in such close quarters.
"I was told that you saved the lady in question," I said as if we were gentlemen in a Sherlock Holmes story. "Miss Lear has disappeared and her father hired me to make sure that she's all right."
Even though I hadn't actually used the word, money was now a part of the conversation.
Red had moved up to flank his brother in life and in crime. He had an uneven green X tattooed on the left side of his neck. It was a jagged cry of illiterate emotion.
"What you want her for?" the younger man asked.
"Angelique and her father are estranged," I explained. "He only found out from her landlord yesterday about the attack. It seems that she's late on the rent and her mother, the cosigner, didn't have the money to cover it. She called the father, the father called Plenty Realty, and they told him about the attack. I guess a Mr. Klott told them."
"Klott," the balding white man spat. "He's a piece'a shit."
"Mr. Lear hired me to make sure his daughter was all right, and so I came to the people who saved her. He's willing to pay for information that will lead to his peace of mind."
"It was me was there," the kid said.
"But this is my house," the elder added. "My rules."
"Hey, Pete," the younger man objected. "You don't own what me and Figg did. You wasn't even there when those men jumped that girl."
Pete turned his head, placing his free hand on the kid's chest.
"This is my house, Lonnie. You live here for nuthin'. You eat and sleep on my dime. So you wouldn't even'a been here if it wasn't for me."
The kid's light-blue eyes were considering the words-also the big piece of steel in his benefactor's right hand.
The younger man needn't have worried. I wouldn't have let Pete break his skull. That cranium contained information I needed.
"Yeah, sure, Pete. You right," the kid said.
For a long moment Pete stared at Lonnie. Then he turned to me.
"You still here, blood?"
"Mr. Lear doesn't care who he pays for the information," I said simply, unperturbed by the elder's display of personal power.
"I told you to leave."
"You don't want the money?"
"I want to crack your head open with this wrench."
Most people will explain their jobs to you with surprising accuracy. They were, let's say, given a hundred tasks and they accomplished that number. Or, if only ninety-seven jobs were completed, they'll have a good excuse for the gaffe-which is usually something or someone else's fault. The generator blew, they might tell you. Or their associates, underlings, or bosses failed to make good on their promises or deadlines.
Even the president of the United States claimed that his war was a mistake based on misinformation he received from those whom he expected to supply him with the truth.
People who work within systems can avoid their own shortcomings because they are surrounded by people who are just as flawed.
I have never had that luxury. I work for myself and according to my own rules. When I was a crook, working for crooks, I had better know my weaknesses because a misstep meant at least prison and at worst death. And once I decided to go straight, my options became even more restricted. No one was going to protect me. No one was going to cover for my errors.
One of my most serious flaws is physical overconfidence. I'm rarely afraid of any man or group of men who threaten me. That's why when I was faced by Gustav and his Eastern European goons I was, mostly, fearless.
This fearlessness, by the fact of the absoluteness of the word in a physical world, is unfounded. I can be hurt. I can be killed. And, worse than all that, I can lose. But somewhere in my true being I am unaware of these facts. And so when Pete threatened to smash my skull, I smiled.
It wasn't a broad grin. I didn't show any teeth, but a bare flicker of disdain did cross my lips, and therefore the line that Pete had, in his mind, etched in the concrete at our feet.
Most people who glance at me see a short, bald, overweight, middle-aged black man. Not much of a threat to anyone. But prison had taught Pete to look closer.
After that smirk, he studied me like a religious scholar carefully perusing an original leaf of the New Testament, scrawled upon crumbling parchment.
It took him a minute but finally he said, "Show me some ID."
John Tooms had a detective's license with my picture on it. It was laminated and stamped, official to even the closest of inspections, and as counterfeit as a hundred-thousand-dollar bill.
If there was any flaw in the document Pete would have found it. He studied the card with an expert's eye. He tested everything from the texture of the photograph to the edges of the lamination.
Handing the card back to me, he asked, "How much?"
"Thousand dollars if I get any information that I should be able to chase down."
"Thousand dollars," Lonnie whispered.
"Let's see it."
"Let's hear what your friend here has to say first."
"Okay," Pete said. "Come on upstairs and we'll talk over a beer."
"I would prefer to take a walk down to the restaurant on the corner."
"You scared?" Pete asked, giving me a triumphant grin.
"I never enter the living quarters of a man who has threatened me."
"How can I be sure you'll pay if I let Lonnie talk to you?"
"You know my name and you know the location of my office. I'm not stupid enough to try and cheat a whole house full of ex-cons."
The three of us stood around for a few seconds more. Everything had already been decided, we just needed a short time for that decision to settle.
33
The Cisco Kid Cafe was a dilapidated restaurant-bar with posters of old westerns on the walls. The strawberry-blond waitress wore a very short cranberry skirt over stout shapeless legs and sported clashing tattoos that bore witness to a life of rebellion and failure.
"Hey, Lonnie," she said to the youngest of us.
"China," he responded.
"What can I get for you guys?"
"I'll take whatever you got on tap and they can have anything they want," I said, making it clear that the bill should come to me.
Lonnie ordered a beer, while Pete asked for a double margarita without salt.
"So this is how it works," I said to the men once China had gone. "What I need is information I can work with. Descriptions, license plates, things they said or that Angelique said about them. I need something to help me find her. That's what I'll base the payment on. If you can't give me a few things like that then we can just have our drinks and move on."
Lonnie and Pete looked at each other. It was straight talk and they accepted it.
Pete nodded. "What if you can't find her with what we give you?"
"That's my problem. I'll pay for good intelligence. But I don't want to hear about some black Lincoln and two guys in suits."
"What if you're workin' for the guys after her?" Lonnie asked. He was still an innocent, in spite of his associations.
"Do you know where she went?" I asked.
"No."
"Then anything you give me the guys who tried to grab her probably already know. I need to get to them."
China came back with our drinks and served them. She and Lonnie exchanged a few pleasantries before she wandered off to the bar to chat with the young bartender-who sported a bright-yellow Mohawk.
"I wrote down the license-plate number," Lonnie said when the girl was gone. "It was a dark-green Lincoln… pretty late model."
"You got the number on you?"
"In my wallet."
"Anything else?"
"Figg-Figgis-an' me heard the girl screaming when we were workin' on his motorcycle," Lonnie said. "We run out and see these two white guys in business suits tryin' to drag her into their car. They didn't look like cops, so we run over there. Figg took a tire iron. He got there first and told 'em to let her go. They said he better get away and he cracked the passenger's side of their windshield. One guy reached into his pocket and I hit him in the jaw."