Mama was still coughing. Still wouldn’t take her fucking pills.
Now Valdez was lining up in the wake of another too-hard-too-fast fuck-up, two spots floating nice and loose over open pockets, clean back-up angles everywhere, and then the eight ball doubled into the side, one of Valdez’s favourite cheap trick shots, he’d do it with his fucking eyes closed if he wanted. Another fifty bucks. He’d–
But Valdez frowned instead and lifted his chin off the cue. Got up and came round the table to Dougie, eyes narrowed.
‘Hey, pengo mio. You say Elvira wasn’t working tonight?’ He nodded across the gloom to the bar. ‘Because if that ain’t work, then you got a problem.’
So Dougie slanted a glance across the gloom to where Valdez was looking, and like the rest of it wasn’t fucking enough, here’s Elvie on her stool with her back to the bar, elbows down and tits cranked out in that red top he bought her back in May, legs making all kinds of slit-skirt angles on the frame of the stool, and all for this big black guy draped over the next stool and just looking her over like she’s fruit on some Meade Avenue street stall.
Too fucking much.
He hefted the cue up one-handed through his own grip, a half metre down from the tip where it thickened, reversed his hold and carried it low at his side across to the bar. Elvira saw him coming, made that dumb fucking face of hers and stopped gabbing. Dougie let the silence work for him, came on a couple more steps and locked to a halt a metre and half off the black guy’s shoulder.
‘That’s a mistake you’re making, pal,’ he said, breathing hard. Anger slurred through his tone like smeared paint on a cheap logo. ‘See, Elvira here isn’t working tonight. You want some cheap fucking pussy, you’d better come around and see her another fucking day. Got that?’
‘We’re just talking.’ The black guy’s tone was low and reasonable, almost bored. Weird fucking accent as well. He didn’t even look at Dougie. ‘If Elvira’s not working, I guess she’s free to do that, right?’
Dougie felt the weight of the day come down on him like demolition.
‘I don’t think you’re paying attention,’ he told the guy tightly.
And then the black guy did look at him, a sudden switch so his eyes collected Dougie’s stare like third base snapping up a low ball out at Monster Park.
‘No, I am,’ he said.
It stopped Dougie dead in his tracks, knocked him back and kept the cue at his side, because at some level he couldn’t quite nail he knew this guy was actively looking for what came next. It felt like a skid, like ice under his wheels when he least expected it. He knew he had to keep going. No one much in the place tonight but Valdez was watching, so was the barkeep and a couple of others. Whatever went down, street-feed would have it out to everyone by morning, he had to fuck this guy up. But the ground under his feet had shifted, was no longer safe, he couldn’t fucking read this guy or what he’d do.
He tightened his grip on the cue.
‘Try to hit me with that thing,’ said the black man softly, ‘I will kill you.’
Dougie’s heart kicked in his chest. He felt the rage flicker, over-stoked, held too long, suddenly unreliable. Tiny, rain-drip voice of caution in the gap. He drew breath, forced the knowledge down.
‘Door’s over there,’ he said. ‘Just walk the fuck away.’
‘My feet are tired.’
So Dougie just swung that fucking cue like he’d always known deep down he’d have to. Lips peeled back off a snarl and the shaky lift of the held-too-long adrenal surge.
Situation like that, what else was he going fucking do?
Even as the fight bloomed, Carl could feel the small seep of disappointment at the back of it all. This swaggering low-grade gangster in front of him, a little more spine than most pimps maybe, but in the end no competition, no real threat.
Yeah, like you expected anything else out here, black-walled bunker bar in a derelict neighbourhood on the edge of an all but fully automated navy yard. Not like he hadn’t discussed it carefully enough with the autocab, walked the deserted streets for long enough looking. Face it, soak, this is exactly what you’ve been prowling for. This is what you wanted. Enjoy.
The fight was so mapped out in his head, it was almost preordained. He already had his weight braced off the stool he’d been using, some in the forearm where he leant on the bar, more in his legs than he showed. He saw the intention tremor down the other guy’s arm, grabbed a leg of the stool and yanked the whole thing savagely upward. The leg ends hit and gouged, face and chest. Swing momentum on the seat end hooked the thing round and blocked out the cue completely – the strike never made it above waist height. He let go, stepped in as the pimp reeled back, hand up to the rip in his face. The stool tumbled away. Carl threw a long chop, hard as he could make it, into the unguarded side of the throat. The pimp hit the floor, dead as far as he could tell. Elvira shrieked.
At the pool table, the pimp’s shaven-headed friend stood shocked and motionless, cue held defensively across his body in both hands. Carl stalked forward a couple of steps, proximity sense peeled for the rest of the room.
‘Well?’ he rasped.
It was half a dozen metres at most, if the skinhead had a gun he wasn’t going to have time to clear it before Carl was on him. Carl saw in his face that he knew it.
Peripheral vision, left. The barkeep, fumbling for something, phone or weapon. Carl threw out an arm, finger raised.
‘Don’t.’
On the floor, the pimp moaned and shifted. Carl checked every face in the room, calibrated probable responses, then kicked the downed man in the head. The moaning stopped.
‘What’s his name?’ he asked of the room.
‘Uh, it’s Dougie.’ The barkeep. ‘Dougie Kwang.’
‘Right. Well anyone here who’s a big friend of Dougie Kwang’s, maybe wants to stay and discuss this with me, you can. Anyone else had better leave.’
Hasty shuffle of feet, graunch of chair legs jammed back in a hurry. The thin crowd, scrabbling to leave. The door swung open for them, he felt the cold it let in touch the back of his neck. The barkeep snatched the opportunity, went too. Left him with Elvira who’d started grubbing about on the floor next to Dougie in tears, and the skinhead, who Carl guessed just didn’t trust getting safe passage to the door. He gave him a cold smile.
‘You really want to make something of this?’
‘No, he doesn’t. Look at his face. Stop being an asshole and let him go.’
Control and the mesh stopped him whipping round at the voice, the cool amusement and the iron certainty beneath. He already knew from the tone that there was a gun pointing at him. That he wasn’t on the floor next to Dougie, shot dead or dying, was the only part that didn’t make sense.
He shelved the wonder, stepped aside with ironic courtesy and gestured the skinhead to pass him. Momentary flashback to the chapel in South Florida State, the sneering white supremacist walking past him up the aisle. Suddenly, he was sick of it all, the cheap postures and moves, the use of stares, the whole fucking mechanistic predictability of the man-dance.
‘Go on,’ he said flatly. ‘Looks like you get a free pass. Better take Elvira there with you.’
He watched Dougie Kwang’s friend drop the pool cue he was clutching and come forward a hesitant step at a time. He couldn’t work out what was going on either. His eyes flickered from Carl to whoever the new arrival was and back. A numb failure to catch up was stamped across his face like a bootprint. He knelt beside the off-duty whore and tried to manhandle her to her feet. She wriggled and wept, refused to get up, hands still plastered on Dougie’s motionless form, long dark-curling hair shrouding his eyes-wide, frozen face. She keened and sobbed, half comprehensible fragments, some Sino-Spanish street mix Carl couldn’t follow well.