Payback

'What you gonna do?' Red laughed. 'Shoot me with my own shit?' Red pulled up his sleeve to reveal his track marks. 'Go ahead! All I’ll be is high! And I still ain’t tellin’ you shit!'

'Hold his head, Bobby.'

Bobby grabbed Red by the throat with one hand and held his forehead with the other. Mike held his gun to Red’s head and slowly moved the syringe toward Red’s eye. 'Who said I was gonna put it in your arm?' Mike inched the syringe closer.

Red tried to move his head, but Bobby’s grip was too tight. The terror was apparent on Red’s face as the syringe came close to his eye.

'Okay!'

Mike stopped. 'Where is he?'

'Okay, he was here. But he’s gone now.'

'Was he alone?'

'No. He had some black chick with him.'

Bobby looked at Mike. 'What she look like?' he asked.

'She was tall for a chick, five-nine, maybe five-ten. Dark-skinned with long hair,' Red gasped as Bobby tightened his grip on Red’s throat.

'Was she all right?'

'Yes!' Red spit out. 'She was all over him, beggin’ him to hurry up and get it.'

Mike looked at Bobby. Since he knew that Cassandra wasn’t a shooter, Mike assumed it wasn’t her. On top of that, it wouldn’t make any sense at all for Sal to be riding around with her.

He was breathing hard, his heart was pounding. He wanted to kill Red. Mike knew that he needed to pull up. Red may become useful if Sal came back. 'Sal, he come here a lot?' he asked.

'Whenever he’s in town.'

Mike moved his gun away from Red’s head and threw the syringe on the floor. Bobby grabbed Red and pulled him up from the table. 'If he comes here again, you call me at this number.'

Chapter Fourteen

Bobby followed Mike out of the house, leaving Red clutching his throat and breathing hard. As soon as they were in Bobby’s car, Mike called Freeze. 'Where are you?'

'At the hospital.'

'The hospital? What happened?'

'Everything’s cool.'

'Then what you doin’ at the hospital?'

'I’ll let Nick explain that to you,' Freeze said as he watched Nick push Monika’s wheelchair out of the hospital.

'Put him on.'

'He can’t talk right now. He’s doin’ what he gotta do.'

'This about that girl that worked with him? What was her name?'

'Monika.'

Mike held the phone and thought about what Freeze had told him about Nick’s two partners. He said that while they were investigating Chilly, Monika had been shot five times. Two shots in the chest, two to the head, one hit her above the left ear. She caught one in her eye, and they weren’t able to save the eye. The other one was in her hand. The next day, Nick found his other partner, Jett Bronson, dead with a trail of blood coming from his ear. 'Tell him to call me,' Mike said and hung up the phone.

As soon as he handed the phone back to Bobby the phone rang. Bobby looked at the number on the display, put the phone down, and started the car. 'Where we goin’ now?'

'Let’s go check out Cityscape. It’s a tittie bar on Queens Boulevard.'

Bobby put the car in drive and wiped the sweat from his brow. 'What’s goin’ on at the hospital?'

'Nick’s taking care of some unfinished business. But fuck that for now. What I wanna know is what’s up with this woman.'

'Her name is Cat. I met her at Cynt’s.'

'What were you doin’ at Cynt’s?'

'You remember when Wanda was losing her mind about Freeze letting things run down at Cuisine and gettin’ sloppy with everything else?'

'Yeah, what about it?'

'She asked me if I’d, you know, make the rounds, check up on him, see if shit was runnin’ right.'

'Okay.'

'Freeze introduced me to her and she danced for me. Damn, that bitch can dance, and she was cool. I wasn’t even tryin’ to fuck her. We would just hang out, talk shit, that’s it.'

'Yeah, right. You knew you were gonna end up fuckin’ her when you started hangin’ out with her,' Mike said.

Bobby smiled. 'She’s a young girl, barely twenty-two, fine as hell; nice-sized titties, little bitty waist, with a toot-booty that can stop traffic. That body made her one of the most popular dancers at Cynt’s.'

'Young girl blow your mind.'

Bobby paused before saying, 'Yeah.'

'So, you been hangin’ out at Cynt’s with this woman?'

'Not anymore. Cynt fired her for being late or not showing up at all.'

'Was she with you when she was late or not showing up at all?'

'Yeah.'

Mike started laughing. 'You got the girl fired from her job, Bobby?'

Bobby laughed.

'Fuckin’ up Cynt’s business over some pussy? You know better than that,' Mike said, continuing to laugh as Bobby’s phone rang again. Bobby looked at the display, and once again he put the phone down without answering.

'That her?'

'Yeah,' Bobby said louder than he needed to.

'She’s kind of a pest, ain’t she?'

Bobby shook his head. 'Mike, you just don’t know.'

'If she’s that much of a pest, why don’t you cut her loose?'

'I tried, but she won’t go.'

'The fuck you mean, she won’t go?'

'She won’t leave me alone. She’ll call with some excuse to get me over there. Dumb shit, like she need a ride someplace or I got something of hers and she gotta have it right then.'

'And you go?' Mike questioned.

'Yeah. I know what’s gonna happen when I get there, but I do it anyway.'

Mike looked at Bobby like he was a fool. 'You’re either a fool or you’re pussy whipped.'

'Pussy whipped. She’ll always find a way to come out of her clothes or she’ll just answer the door naked and I gotta fuck her. One time, she called me and said that she needed me to come get her from Cynt’s ’cause she was locked out and needed to go to the Bowery to meet a friend of hers to get the keys,' Bobby explained. 'So I tell Pam that I gotta go make the rounds.'

'Hold up,' Mike interrupted. 'What rounds? You ain’t made rounds in years.'

'Come on, Mike. Who does Pam talk to? She don’t talk to Freeze, she thinks Wanda is overbearing, her and Shy are great friends, but only when they see each other.' Bobby paused. 'So I blamed it on you.'

'What?'

'After that thing with Wanda and Freeze, I told her that you said I had to start making the rounds, you know, just to make sure things are goin’ right. So when she calls, I tell Pam it’s you reminding me that I need to make the