The lanky form saunters ever closer, his slow pace mocking and lackadaisical. The temperature has cooled to something pleasant, but my skin feels grimy, covered in the sweat of reluctant anticipation. The car's driver flips on the emergency flashers, stunning scarlet stabs of high agitation.
“Thought you moved on with your life,” I spit, raising the Eagle to point it at the chest of the approaching darkness. Never trust this man, something I learned the hard way. “Thought you found a new gutter to squirm in.”
The familiar voice drawls in answer, “There was a time when I found your insolence endearin', in a way. Howevah, I find it to be tiresome after so long of bein' rid o' you.”
This is the man who put the first-ever gun in my hand some ten years ago, a Ruger sixer that's still packed safely among my belongings.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, unable to keep the question from sounding like a threat. Five consecutively better summers have passed since I last saw him.
“You see, mah car broke down, and I was just wonderin' if a strappin' young lad like yourself might lend a hand…”
I flash forward, twining my fingers into a thick gold chain around his throat and digging the distant end of the silencer into the bottom of his chin as I stretch his neck.
“Okay,” he says, hands carefully pushed into the air to avoid misunderstandings, “maybe I miss you jus' a lil' bit.”
I grind my teeth, fighting the urge to pistol whip him. He must have expected such a response from me.
“Why are you here?”
Instinct says to pull the trigger and be done with it. My gut says there is nothing in the world worth the trouble he will bring. Logic says this doesn't make sense.
“I hear this is a bus'ness negotiation,” he grins, showing his large, yellowed teeth. He's wearing a wide-brimmed, leather hat pulled low over his eyes, hiding them from anyone who might dare to see his dirty secrets.
“You don't do business in this town,” I tell him, twisting my wrist to make the weapon bite him.
He makes a drawn-out chuckle that reverberates through both metals in my hands, then forces an exaggerated bow, jaw clenching to push my hold on him down as well. He says, “I'm into mediation these days.”
All I can see beneath the shadow of the hat is his Cheshire cat grin, his smoke-colored teeth stretching for miles. Once upon a time, that smile reassured me. Now it just makes me sick.
“On whose account?” If I didn't have such a firm hold on something, my hands would be shaking in my fury.
“Gram Margalis,” he hisses. I slam him against the support beam, knocking his hat askew and looking him in the eye.
He's so pleased by the distress I know he can sense within me. Or perhaps that look is amusement at the heat he's so easily and quickly produced in my temper.
Gram Margalis is an old dirty name in our part of the drug trade, especially in this city. He's a fast-talking deviant who knows every crevice and crag of everybody's business. He's a con-man and a junk dealer, a pusher, and he's the demon in charge of the trafficking ring known collectively as the Reapers, a name they earned from their heartless debt management practices. Again, I know I should blow the middleman's brains onto the sidewalk, but it's not my place despite my history. The blinking hazard lights feel like physical attacks on my collectivity.
“Hold that thought, Freddy,” Noah says, behind me suddenly. Strange, I didn't notice him arrive. It's not like me to drop my guard like that.
The man under my grip snickers as Noah inches past me to unlock the restaurant door and slip inside. My hard attention stays on the fragment of my past.
“You're the lowest slime this city has to offer, made of blood, puke, and piss,” I say in a somehow controlled meter. My bones chill at the malice in the gaze he returns.
“How long have ya waited to say that to me, kid?” he asks, his smile fading into a dangerous set that I also recognize. I have scars associated with that look. “How many hours of sleep have ya lost?”
I'm staring straight at him, but I can't see a damn thing. His heart must be beating beneath my grip but I can't feel it. Maybe he doesn't have one. All I can hear is my breath, strained, long and shallow. I can't speak to answer, so he does it for me.
“I hope they are countless,” he whispers as the door cracks open and Noah makes way for both of us.
The moment stinks of agony and irony. I'm getting my wish, gaining admittance to be at the side of the new queen of the ring, yet it's in the worst of scenarios, with the worst of players. Silence yawns, stretches into a ragged apprehension, and for the indeterminate amount of time, I can't move to release my hold. The conflict in my head rages long enough to break down the salacious curve of those evil lips that still sometimes haunts my darker hours. For just a moment – it must be only a moment – he believes that he is about to die.
Then Noah softly says, “Freddy, c'mon.”
It's enough to pull me back a couple steps, to pry my white-knuckled hand from choking him with his own chain, and to dislodge my gun barrel from the underside of his chin. He straightens himself indignantly, brushing off the front of his shirt like it'll shake my traces from him. I watch him turn toward the door with pomp and, finally, I force my words.
“Derrik,” I growl, a staccato piece of verbal sandpaper that makes him freeze, and then slowly turn back to me, hatred flashing in his slitted eyes. I hold the eye connection that threatens to make me sick and say, “The only hours I've lost to
