paraphernalia back… and then they’d kill Bruce.
Clifford and Norman continued to argue over who could speak while the three of us just watched. It was moving to the level of performance art until Fiona made it stop.
“Mommy must hate it when you two fight,” Fiona said. “Why don’t I shoot you both and the one that can still talk can be the official spokesman?”
That quieted them down.
“Listen to me, boys,” I said. “We’re all in the same boat here. The Banshees hired Grossman to hit us both. I got that much out of him. He was actually pretty forthcoming after Duke took off his ear.”
Sam tried to act nonchalant and menacing at the same time by squinting one eye and surveying Clifford and Norman’s ears.
“The fat one,” Sam said, “he’ll take a saw. That’s a pretty thick membrane he’s got there between his ear and his head. Might need to get something electric involved.”
“See what I mean?” I said. “Grossman didn’t have a thick membrane, so he gave up pretty quick. He got lucky one time robbing you, because you’re stupid enough not to have gone digital. What the hell were you people thinking, keeping a bunch of paper around?”
“Institutional stupidity,” Sam said. “That’s my guess.”
That would have to stand as the answer, as neither Clifford nor Norman was piping up. It didn’t matter, really, since they had no say. They were just messengers. Just adrenaline. But they would take the message back, that much I knew.
“Grossman, he didn’t fare so well trying to hit our stash. I cleaned up my mess and now I’m happy to make a deal to get your mess taken care of, too, before you gotta deal with the Banshees.”
“What about you and the Banshees?” Clifford said.
“They don’t have territory we want,” I said. “They’re moving H and girls. That doesn’t interest us. Their disrespect does, but I’ll work through that. They’ll get theirs.”
“Oh, indeed, pilgrim,” Sam said. “The Redeemers will be redeemed.” He was using that John Wayne voice again. It wasn’t really working. Maybe it was the use of “pilgrim” as a pejorative. I gave Sam’s chopper a light kick just to let him know that maybe he should remain quiet if he was going to be using that particular vocal disguise.
The fact was, getting the Banshees and the Ghouls into a conflict served everyone’s purposes-everyone that was on the right side of the law, at least. People getting hustled by the Ghouls were usually in no position to go to the police, so business was conducted as usual. But when two gangs go to war, that’s something the police and the FBI have a real interest in. There’s a lot of illegal secondary activity involved with a gang war.
“Boss will want to see a body,” Norman said. “Until then, fuck off.”
“Norman, shut the hell up!” Clifford said.
“The offer is five hundred K,” I said. “That’s cash.”
“At least that much was taken from us,” Clifford said.
His numbers were a little off-or Bruce’s were-but I decided not to note the difference publicly.
“I got some of that, too,” I said. “But that money’s dirty. Probably the FBI has every other serial number written down. I want five hundred K fresh. I don’t care where you get it. Twenty-four hours from now, I want a response. Or I keep all the money, piss on your colors, and drop your paperwork off with the first Johnny Law I see.”
Clifford shook his head. “No disrespect,” he said, and I actually felt like he meant it, “but you won’t see a dime and I’ll probably be killed for not killing you. Then you’ll have Ghouls on your ass until the end of time. Every Redeemer in the country will have a target. No one wins here.”
“The Banshees do,” I said, because I hated to admit it, but it seemed like Clifford had a valid argument. “This is probably what they want. We kill each other over their job. They practically led us right to Bruce Grossman in the first place. How long did it take you? A day? Two? I’m gonna guess that house fire out in the Glades wasn’t an accident.”
“We walk out of here, we never saw you,” Clifford said.
“That what you told Nick Balsalmo?” I figured I’d play that card, particularly since it wasn’t like Nick Balsalmo was some undercover operative. He was a drug dealer, which meant that by definition, he knew people. “That guy wasn’t terrible. But I saw what you guys did to him. That didn’t look like a nice transaction.”
“I got a kid,” Clifford said. He showed me his hand. I wondered if he was also showing me his hand metaphorically, if this was how he got out of every sticky situation. Who’s going to kill someone with a tattoo of their baby daughter on their hand?
“Just let me shoot them,” Fiona said.
Well, there was one person…
“You’ll be looking for my girlfriend, anyway,” I said. “We’re already at war. You just didn’t know who you were fighting.”
Clifford considered my response. It also made sense.
“A body,” Norman said quietly. This time Clifford didn’t disagree.
“Proof of death,” Clifford said. “You give us Grossman’s body, maybe the boss will listen, work something out, save us all a lot of problems. You bring us his head, we can do business.”
“His head is gone,” I said. “He’s not in a lot of big identifiable pieces.”
Both men nodded with an odd sort of personal reflection. This was shop talk. We could have been talking about the best oil to use in our choppers for all the emotion any of us displayed.
“We heard he was missing a finger,” Norman said. “That’s how we’d know who he was, make sure we didn’t grab the wrong son of a bitch. You think you could get that hand?”
I looked at Sam. This was going to be something he’d need to be in on, for sure. “Duke, you leave one of his hands intact?”
“Yeah,” Sam said, but he didn’t sound filled with confidence. “Yeah. One of them.”
“All right,” I said. “You two go back to your boss and tell him we’ll drop the hand off at Purgatory tomorrow. Any shit goes down, I blow the building up.”
“Anything else?” Clifford said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Tell your boss that if he doesn’t like my terms, or crosses me up, or tries anything shady, I got a guy who is pretty handy with a pair of bolt cutters sitting outside Cindy Connors’ house right now and wherever she goes, he goes. Forever.”
“You got a name?” Norman said. Suddenly he was Chatty Cathy.
“No,” I said. “I’m just a Redeemer.”
I rolled my chopper back about a foot and so did Sam. The Brothers Gluck now had enough room to move, but nothing to make moves with.
“She gonna shoot us if we take a step?” Clifford said.
“No,” I said. “But watch your kneecaps. And when you get outside? Try to be quiet. I don’t want one of my guys to get jumpy and accidentally cap you both.”
I watched Clifford and Norman walk back down the hall. When they got near to Fiona, she smiled at both of them. “Tell Clete he should have let me use the bathroom,” she said. “And that it’s not polite to call women names.”
Neither said anything, which was wise.
Once outside, they climbed into their Camaro and drove off slowly. No shouts. No curses. No shots.
“That was fun,” Fiona said. Her face was flushed and a little sweaty. I’d seen that look on her face before, but not from this angle.
“Yeah,” I said.
Fiona brushed past me, essentially rubbing most of her torso against my right arm in the process, and made her way to the wet bar in the living room. “I’m dying of thirst,” she said.
Once she was out of direct earshot, I turned to Sam. “You know where we can get a human hand?”
Sam exhaled through his mouth. His eyes bulged a bit, but apart from that he didn’t seem unduly bothered by the question. “I got a buddy I can call,” he said.
“Good,” I said.
“Might be hard to find one with a missing finger.”
