maybe a little bit of your orthopedic sandals, the odds are they're going to dry heave.
If you want to go into a field of business where people will get shot around you, or where you might get shot, it's a nice idea to strengthen your gag reflex.
After Blue Shirt and Striped Shirt stopped gagging, Striped Shirt on the perfect mixture of his own blood and a nice sum of his own teeth, I gave a whistle to get their attention. 'Gentlemen,' I said, 'unless you want your friend to bleed to death, you might want to apply a tourniquet to his leg.' Blue Shirt looked at me blankly. Striped Shirt was still trying to catch his breath, which was hard because his face was broken in half. Yellow Shirt? He was moaning and crying and trying to crawl away, which wasn't working too well because he had a shattered shinbone. The truth was that he was unlikely to bleed to death anytime soon, but it wouldn't hurt to stanch the bleeding lest he slip into shock from blood loss and go into cardiac arrest. 'What's your name?' I said to Blue Shirt. I had the gun on him, which I think got him to focus.
'Stan,' he said. His voice was weak and scared, which was the point, after all.
'Stan, I want you to take off that rope belt you have holding up your shorts, and I want you to bind it tight across your friend's shin.'
Stan yanked his belt off and did just that. Striped Shirt, at this point, was a useless mess. He was curled against the wall beneath the mirror and was sort of mumbling and whimpering. He'd need plastic surgery if he ever wanted to model. He was sputtering now, coughing, gagging some more.
'Tell your friend over there to lean forward, or else he's going to choke on his own blood,' I said to Stan. 'If he leans forward, it will drain.'
Stan repeated what I'd just said, which actually got Striped Shirt to move. 'You killed my brother-in-law,' Striped Shirt managed to say once he was able to cough out some blood. He meant, I presumed, the guy he actually shot.
'I didn't kill anyone yet,' I said. 'If he's still bleeding, that means he's still alive. That's how that works.' I leaned down and looked at Yellow Shirt's wound. It was a good one, but he'd live. He'd limp for the rest of his life, but he'd have a good story to tell, replete with a moral and everything.
'Stan,' I said, 'you'll note I haven't hurt you yet. So let's get something straight.'
'Anything,' he said.
'As you can see,' I said, 'Cricket is no longer with us. Whatever debt you think she owed you? That's gone.'
'We just collect,' Stan said. He was looking back and forth at his two friends, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing, like he'd never imagined a situation in his life where he'd be surrounded by that much blood. Faces and legs tend to gush.
'Of course you do,' I said. 'Now let's be straight here, gentlemen, before I have to shoot someone else. Would I be correct in saying you work for Dixon Woods?'
'I don't even know who Dixon Woods is, man,' the shot guy spit out. He was rather lucid now, despite the gunshot wound, the pain, the tourniquet, the likely realization he was having that he'd have to explain to his wife how he get shot. 'I've been shot for some motherfucker I don't even know. I'm having trouble seeing. Jesus. I'm going fucking blind over here.'
'You should know your clients better,' I said. 'What kind of organization sends three men to collect from a woman? You need to talk to your boss, gentlemen, get a better idea of the dangers involved. Maybe see if he'll spring for some shooting lessons. A lesson would be a good thing to have had right now, wouldn't it, Stan?'
'No, sir,' Stan said.
'We can be honest with each other, Stan,' I said. 'Let me guess, you just like to slap women around. Is that right, Stan?'
'No, sir,' he said again.
'What about you?' I said to Yellow Shirt, whose yellow shirt was now covered completely in sweat. It did look like he was suffering.
'I'm going blind,' Yellow Shirt said again.
'That's from pain and blood loss,' I said. I turned to Stan. 'What exactly do you do for a living, Stan?'
'What?' He was starting to get glassy-eyed, too. Slipping into shock and nothing had even happened to him. That can happen when you're in combat: You see someone get shot in front of you, it has a life-affirming effect or it has a life-stunting effect. On Stan, it seemed the latter. The one with the broken face had fallen oddly silent, too, apart from the crying and this weird sucking sound he was making through his missing teeth.
'Do you have a job, Stan? Something that allows you the opportunity to leave work early on a Thursday to shake down socialites?'
'We sell real estate,' he said.
'See, that's interesting,' I said. 'Because you know what I do?' Stan shook his head. He was starting to look a little clammy. 'I invest. Take a look around, Stan. What do you see?'
Stan looked around. 'Furniture,' he said.
'What kind of furniture, Stan?'
'Nice stuff,' he said.
'That's right. What else? Look outside. Go ahead. Stand up. What do you see?'
Stan got up, looked outside the window, saw the new flowers. The decorative stones. The Malibu lights, which weren't armed yet, because a guy needs to keep his surprises to a minimum sometimes. The trimmed lawn. I even had the fountain going. 'You've taken care of the garden again,' he said. 'Made it look nice.'
'Right again,' I said. 'You see, Stan, while you were busy shaking Cricket down for your boss-and we'll get to that in one second, Stan, because I can see you're starting to get nervous that maybe I didn't believe your friend's assertion that he didn't know Dixon-I was looking at the big picture from a boss' perspective. Saw a real business opportunity here. You three are just bagmen. But I like Dixon's moxie here, pimping his own wife. That's a class operation. So you know what I did? I bought the house.'
I pointed the gun at Stan when I said this, let him know I really meant what I said. I didn't of course. At least not exactly.
'Look,' Stan said, 'don't shoot me.'
'I'm not going to shoot you, Stan,' I said. 'Whatever gave you that impression?'
'You shot Burl,' he said, pointing to the man on the ground. I didn't bother to correct his error. If he thought I shot his friend, all the better.
'Why don't you just tell him all of our names!' Burl said. 'Give him your social security number while you're at it, Stan! Jesus. I'm having trouble breathing.'
'If you were really having trouble breathing,' I said, 'you wouldn't be able to talk.' I looked over at the fellow under the mirror, the one who would need some real dental care if he hoped to chew anything ever again. The upshot is that I might have fixed any deviated septum issues he might have had. 'What's his name, Stan?'
'Danny,' he said.
'Okay,' I said. 'Stan, Burl, Danny, here's the deal: I know you're working for Dixon. I don't hold that against you. But Dixon and I have a business interest overseas that he's reneged on recently. It took me a very long time to find him, so I was fortunate when I finally met Ms. O'Connor and learned of her problems. She's graciously allowed me to move into her home, which I've happily done. The real problem, the one you three are paying the price for here, is that your employer Dixon owes me a substantial amount of money, gentlemen. So I want you to get him a message. Are you listening?'
Stan, Burl and even Danny, all regarded me with expectant looks.
'I'm not concerned about the opium anymore. The price of doing business.' All three men darted looks at one another. If I had an idea about Eddie Champagne, it was that even the people working for him, in this case three real estate agents, were probably suspicious of his background, but not all that willing to be too suspicious if money kept flowing to them. Now that one of them had been shot, opium farms in Afghanistan probably seemed like a real possibility. I figured if I tossed in the price of doing business as a mysterious rejoinder, well, they'd figure getting shot was the price, too.
At any rate, I had their attention.
'What I can't forgive,' I continued, 'is the mess he left me with in California. That ended up costing me a great deal of money and resulted in the Mexican Mafia putting a hit order on me, which you can imagine didn't please me.' Now I was just riffing, adding on, letting Stan, Burl and Danny know they were in deep with someone
