Quinn Gets His Kicks

by L H Thomson

  I’d learned my lesson, so I kept quiet. He had two guards, one on either side of him, both packing. I could see someone else out of the very corner of my eye.

  “Do you need anything else from me right now, Mr. Terrasini?”

  His voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Then he strolled casually into full view.

  David Mince.

  I’d run into David while working on another case. He’d been working as a food clerk and part-time extortionist and I’d tried to mitigate the damage his sociopathy might cause by getting Vin the Shin to talk to him, maybe give him a little scare.

  Instead, he recruited the kid.

  It wasn’t a huge leap from there to here. I was tempted to say something wise-assed, but it didn’t seem like the best way to avoid a smack in the head.

  Terrasini looked over at him. “Hmmm? What? Yeah, sure kid, whatever.” He looked back at me. “See that? He asks me before he leaves because he respects his employer. He’s a loyal soldier.”

  He turned slightly away from me, then quickly pivoted and slammed the butt end of a gun into the side of my head. Pain crashed through my front lobe like a brick through a window, my ears ringing slightly from the blow.

  He began pacing. “On the other hand, we have you, Quinn. You get involved with my business with Mr. Hecht, and you cost me money. And thanks to my uncle’s little decree, I’m not allowed to do fuck all about it. Even then, you’ve got the balls to show up at the club and start screwing around with my business again!” He turned to his muscle. “The balls on this guy, Manny! Maron! Size of fucking watermelons, this guy’s balls.”

  I still hadn’t said anything, my bell truly rung by the pistol whipping, and he’d noticed. “No smartass remarks, Quinn? I’m disappointed! You have the reputation for being the kind of blabbermouth it’s a pleasure to deal with. So we’re going to do just that, right after you tell me what you know.”

  He pulled a small scalpel out of his inside breast pocket. “They call my uncle “The Shin” because back in the day, when he still had a pair, he knew how quickly he could get results by busting a guy in the shins. Leastways, that’s what I heard. Me? I like things a little messier but a little quicker. So I’m going to cut off your eyelids. It’s sharp enough, you see.”

  To prove his point, he just nicked my chin slightly, enough to make the blood flow a little.

  The situation was getting out of control. He strode forward, and my hands fought with the knots behind me. I tugged frantically at them, and he giggled shrilly. “Ain’t no point fightin’ it Quinn. You better sit back while I help you … see thing differently.” He leaned forward, hot stank breath on my face, the blade glinting under the neon lights.

  “I bet you’re wondering if it’s razor-sharp? Doesn’t matter. Either way, you’re going to lose this lid, maybe the eye too. But it don’t have to be both eyes.”

  And then the lights went out, plunging the room into blackness.

  I kicked forward hard, trying to guess where a five-foot-nothing mobster’s groin might be. The slight crunching noise and his scream suggested I was on the money.

  Should’ve taken up soccer instead of boxing.

  I threw the chair over as the doors to the room burst open.

  Vin the Shin had sent reinforcements.

  The gunfire began almost immediately, and I was stuck lying on my side, trying to shuffle towards the light of the nearest open door, muzzle flashes sparking around me. I got within a few feet when a familiar face popped his head around the corner.

  “Danny?”

  “Quinn!” He bolted over to me, trying to keep his head down to avoid the stray gunfire. Johnny’s men had gotten the main lights on again, and they were finding cover across the garage, behind oil barrels, a car on a lift, anything available.

  Danny fought with my knots for a few seconds. Across the room, two of Johnny’s boys had helped him to his feet and he was crouched behind an overturned table. “Quinn you bastard!” He still had his nine millimeter, and he started firing off randomly in our direction. He was moving the gun around so much, he’d have been lucky to hit air.

  “Quick, my car!” Danny said. We sprinted out the door. His old wreck of a Ford Tempo was parked by the curb. “Jesus, Danny, still?” I said reflexively. It looked like you couldn’t pay someone to tow it.

  “It’ll get us the hell out of here,” he said. “Get in!”

  He peeled out of there like the hounds of hell were on our tail. Thanks to Vin the Shin’s men and their timely intervention, that probably wasn’t the case. But we weren’t taking any chances.

  We got back to the Garcia De Soria’s twenty minutes later, piling out of their elevator looking like something the street coughed up, Danny his usual Hawaiian-shirt-casual string-bean self, me beaten and bruised.

  “Good lord,” said Mrs. De Soria. “You look like you fought a mountain lion.”

  I felt like it, but I wasn’t admitting that with Nora in the room.

  “Liam,” she said with a nod of greeting. “In a fight? Shocking.”

  “Very funny. Mrs. De Soria, do you have any rubbing alcohol, maybe some….”

  “Shush!” she said. “Come.” The diminutive little red-headed woman grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me towards the bathroom. “Let’s get these cuts cleaned up.”

  Twenty minutes later, she’d cleaned and dressed my cuts, washed the wound to my temple and bandaged it, and made sandwiches and coffee.

  Hell of a woman, Brenda.

  Nora said, “You didn’t answer the question.”

  Now? Here?

  Different question. “You were in a fight? I’m hoping this was at least work related?” she said dryly.

  “Not so much a fight as me tied to a chair while Johnny T teed off on me.”

  She winced. “Ouch.”

  I said to Danny. “How did you wind up there with Vin the Shin’s guys? I thought you were tailing the African bodyguard.”

  “He led me back to Johnny Terrasini’s bodyshop. What can I tell you, man? You’re just lucky I’ve got your back, I guess.”

  I was puzzled. “So how did Vin the Shin’s men know what was going down? You called him?”

  “Nope. You got me, Liam. I mean, I got there, pulled up, saw the lights go out, sprinted over to the door and bam, there you were.”

  Nora asked, “How did you wind up there in the first place? I thought you were keeping a low profile?”

  I exhaled deeply, a combination of pressure release and acceptance of fault. “Ah, hell. I went out for a late jog, wasn’t watching my back.”

  She nodded slowly. “Right. A late jog.”

  “No, really. I don’t have my heavy bag here and I don’t have any of my art supplies, so I needed an outlet.”

  “But you weren’t really paying attention. Again, shocking.”

  Nora’s mother interceded. “Dear, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were upset about something.”

  Nora eyed me coolly. “Liam and I are working through something.”

  My head hurt. We needed to get back on topic. I said to Danny, “So what happened to the African guy, Mpenge?”

  “I saw him turn in to Johnny’s lot from a block away, but I lost his car after that,” he said.

  At least we knew Francois and Johnny Terrasini were working together somehow. Added to what Hardaway had told me, it suggested smuggling was involved.

  I contemplated whether to call Patrick’s mother but realized I didn’t know enough yet. Perhaps she knew what he was up to.

  “So what was he doing before you guys drove over there?”

  Danny chewed contemplatively on his sandwich then washed it down with some coffee. “He spent hours yesterday at a restaurant in Baltimore near the docks, talking to a bunch of other African guys.”

  “You up for a little more recon on him, see if you can figure out what their business is?”

  “You sure you can stay out of trouble for five minutes if I do?”

&
nbsp; The day Danny Saint started with the wisecracks about my inability to avoid conflict, it was probably time to retire.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Druid was near empty at noon on Monday. My father had his usual seat, Marty was behind the bar and my father’s old partner, Fred Keller, was running the pool table on his own.

  “If it wasn’t for your old man, I could probably take Monday off,” Marty joked when I looked around the room. “Thankfully he drinks like a damned fish.”

  Pa raised his glass. “And right back at you, you decrepit old senior citizen.”

  “So what’s new dad?”

  He looked at me like I’d asked him to quit drinking. “What’s new? What do you think is new, Liam? Jaysus. I’m retired. I drink and shoot the shit with Marty,” he gestured to the gigantic bartender. “And if you ever had to sit and listen to Marty you’d know what I mean when I say ‘shooting the…”

  “All right, all right, let’s keep it clean you useless bastards,” Marty interjected, before going back to swabbing glasses.

  I grabbed the stool next to Pa. “I’m sorry I’m asked. Jeez, when’d you get so cheerful?”

  Dad downed his glass of Straub and motioned to Marty for another. “You’re mother’s making me play bridge with her and the Smiths on Thursday and Friday nights.”

  “Friday nights? Ouch.” Dad was a hardcore boxing fan, and that might rule out some of the best fights on cable.

  “Don’t I fucking know it!” He downed half his next glass of beer in one pull. “Still she’s cheerful as hell since you started going to church regular again. Thanks for that.”

  I wasn’t doing it just to please her, but if it kept them both happy, all the better. “It’s nothing,” I said. “Besides, NFL season’s not back for months.”

  He laughed at that. “You got that right. Your ma don’t count going to church as us spending time together, so that’s why she’s doing the bridge thing. She said she thinks we’re not romantic no more.”

  I looked at him blankly. “At your age?”

  He shot me a sour look. “Well don’t say it like that, Liam. Jaysus! I ain’t dead yet. Besides, we always found ways to stay close, you know. She’s just worried, is all. All women do it. Jaysus, you don’t know that, no wonder you ain’t married.”

  My head lolled back involuntarily. “Ahhhgh, not you too! I get enough of that from Ma!”

  He smiled gently then finished his beer in a couple of pulls. “You can never fault your mother for loving you boys too much,” he said. “She’s better’n all of us.”

  That I never doubted.

  Dad said, “What about Nora? You know we all just been waitin’ for the day you two finally figure out what everyone else already figured out.”

  “Really? You mean….”

  “That you two are about as moony for each other as a couple of thirteen-year-olds? Yeah. It’s revolting. Come on: let’s retire to the patio.”

  The patio at the Druid was an area of the sidewalk outside the emergency side door that had been ruled off with masking tape. But it was a convenient place for the old cops who made up most of its clientele to have a cigarette. Dad insisted, even though he’d beaten back prostate cancer just a decade earlier. The rest of us had been smart enough not to follow him down that route; between the drinking and the smokes, he looked in his seventies.

  He flicked the ash off his Winston and blew out a plume of blue smoke. “If your mother wants to spend more time wit’ me, all she’s got to do is let me smoke in the house.”

  “That ain’t never going to happen.”

  More ash. “Yeah, I know. But it makes for a fine excuse to get out for a while, and like I said, retirement is boring as hell.”

  “Really? I mean, I know you joke.”

  “No joke.”

  “But you looked forward to it for so long…”

  “It’s funny, ain’t it? You think the stress and change of the job every day is what gets to you, but sometimes, it’s what’s keeping you alive.

  He did seem older since his retirement, less engaged. Maybe he just needed other things to keep his mind busy. I said, “You read the paper today? State’s cutting the budget again because of the…”

  Pa waved me off, inhaling and exhaling hard, with a little more desperation. “Yeah, yeah, I got it son. Find ways to keep myself busy. Thanks, but I got that covered.” He tossed the butt on the sidewalk. “Going to start betting on the bridge games. Get some side action going without your mother knowing.”

  “You’re a paragon of law enforcement.”.

  “Hey! No critiques from the recently paroled, okay?”

  My father could always make me smile… even when a psychotic local gangster was gunning for my head.

  “So like I said, what about Nora?”

  “What about her?”

  “So are you ever going to make a decent woman of her? I mean, sweet t’undering Jaysus, she practically sends you an engraved invitation every odder’ day.”

  I thought about it for a moment. He really meant it; there was no doubting Dad’s conviction when it came to Nora and me. And with what she’d said recently?

  Maybe he was right. Maybe I had to try the direct approach.

  I was in the Druid’s parking lot and about to climb into the beast when Davy arrived. It was the first time I’d seen him in civilian clothes outside of Ma’s Sunday dinner in I didn’t know how long.

  “You look happy,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh ha. Funny. You write that one at the donut shop?”‘

  He pointed to the bandage on my temple. “What the hell…”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Your friends play rough.”

  “Not friends, obviously. You’d think between this and the grenade, your guys would get that.”

  “Maybe they’d all be happier if we could get somewhere on this Junior Flores thing,” he said.

  Davy was quiet for a few moments, standing there with his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, like a nervous teen. “So… you get anywhere?”

  I laughed. “Are you actually asking me for a lead? Oh, this is rich! Does this mean I get to not be considered total scum anymore by your fellow officers?”

  That soured him. “It probably depends on whether you’re going to offer us any help.”

  I thought about it. I was in this for Karen, and that meant finding Junior’s killer, no matter who got the credit. “You know about the kid and his upcoming pro contract?”

  He nodded. “Sure. But what’s the tie?”

  “On the night Junior was killed, when he was working at the clubhouse, he heard the kid, Patrick, get into an argument with his agent, David B. Davidson; something about Davidson cutting him a bad deal so he can make more off the contract himself.”

  Davy smiled. “The kid confirms it?”

  “Yeah. I haven’t talked to the agent yet…”

  “You did us a solid. I’ll let you know what he tells us.”

  “It’s a start.”

  He eyed me suspiciously again. “This don’t mean we’re all square for you going up, for the way you fucked up and all,” Davy said.

  “I know. But like I said: it’s a start.”

  Ricky Garcia looked unimpressed. He tended to gesture flamboyantly when annoyed. “I only just forgave you for the last time you almost got me killed,” he said. “Liam, baby, you are stone cold trouble, my friend.”

  He’d heard about the shootout on the radio. It was all over every newscast, along with the usual speculative angle about whether a new gang war was breaking out in the city. What he hadn’t known, until twenty seconds earlier, was that I’d been involved.

  “Blabbermouth,” I said to Nora, who was sitting across the small patio table from Ricky.

  “I figured he’d be worried if he found out later,” she said.

  “I’m right here, you know,” said Ricky. “When you moved southside, that didn’t mean you got to start taking more stupid risks.” />
  Ricky was my neighbor at the loft I briefly rented downtown. He’d been roughed up by some of Vin the Shin’s boys on one of my cases, and it took him six months to forgive me.

  He said, “You promised Al and me that you’d take it easy with that stuff. It’s just ridiculous.” Al and Ricky lived together. Though Al was about thirty-five years Ricky’s senior, you never saw two people more in love.

  He filled us in. “Al’s retiring next month from his job with the school system. He’s already talking about us going to Florida together in the winter. He says the cold makes his trick hip act up.”

  “How are you with that? I mean, leaving town for the winter every year.”

  “Never know until I try. I mean, it’s Florida. How bad could it be?”

  “You sure you’re okay with … you know, really settling down? I mean, we’ve never really talked about it, but…”

  “Let me guess,” he said, “you’ve just noticed he’s a lot older than me, right? I mean, who knew?”

  “Alright, alright, I’ll shut up now,” I said.

  Nora asked, “So have the police talked to you yet about protecting you?”

  “Nah, they’ve basically handed the explosion investigation over to the feds.

  “The guy in the suit who was waiting at your hospital room?”

  “Yeah, he’s with the FBI. Name’s Belloche. He’s got quite the hard-on for Johnny T.”

  She giggled. “And he thinks YOU’RE tied up with him? Some judge of character.”

  Ricky snorted at that. The memory of getting slapped around by Vin’s men wasn’t that old.

  “Yeah,” I said, “again, I’m sorry about that, Rick.”

  “Uh huh,” he said, not entirely convincing.

  Nora excused herself and went to the bathroom, and Ricky leaned across the table and squeezed my forearm. “Congratulations, baby! I knew you’d find somebody eventually!”

  It took me a second to realize he meant Nora. “Woah! I don’t know where you’re getting that from, bud, but we’re just friends.”

  He squinted doubtfully. “You got to be kidding.” Then he saw I was serious. “You’re serious? Boyfriend, are you out of your mind? That girl is in love with you!”