Remo sat up straighter. "That's what I'm selling, Michelangelo."
Figaroa nodded, then shook his head. He looked at the man across the booth as if he didn't quite believe what he was seeing.
The man who called himself Remo Vu was slim, neither tall nor short. He had dark hair and deep-set eyes that were cold, but the goofy look on his face told you more about who he really was. Michelangelo had noticed the expensive Italian loafers, which were a point in his favor, but Remo Vu was also wearing black Chinos and a black T-shirt. A T-shirt! There's class for you.
"You telling me you want me to pay you, some sleazebag off the street, somebody I don't even know, you want me to pay you for information that may or may not be true."
"Oh, it is true, Michelangelo, I promise."
"You promise? Let me tell you something, Remo Vu, whatever the fuck kind of name that is. I know who you are."
"Really?"
"I seen your kind before, all over the place. A month don't go by that I don't run into another Remo Fucking Vu. And you're all little guys with nothing going for ya except your little schemes and little ideas, and now you're trying one of your little schemes on me. Well, I'm saying no. I'm doing worse than saying no, 'cause I'm going to make sure all the other little maggots know that fucking with Michelangelo Figaroa is a major mistake."
The waitress arrived with a tray of plates and began setting them on the table, frightened and silent. "What is this?" Figaroa asked. "You invite me to a business dinner and you order me hamburger balls, the cheapest entree on the menu? You slap me in the face when you're trying to do business with me? You're just proving my point, Remo Vu. You know what comes next, don't you?"
"No. Do you?"
"Better believe it," Figaroa's voice was low and threatening. "Time for you to start serving as an example for the other maggots."
"Okay. Fine. I give up, Figgy."
That was the last straw. Figaroa was fed up with the smart-ass in the T-shirt, and nobody ever called him Figgy. He pulled out his brand-new toy, glad to have a chance to show it off. The piece cost him a bundle, but it was baddest piece of hardware on the streets of this town.
"Okay, dirtbag, time to talk straight"
"Has Figgy got a new popgun? I'm not impressed, Figgy."
Figaroa's brain boiled. "Look, shit-for-brains, this is a Heckler . It's got twenty rounds in the magazine, 4.6 mm shockers that go twenty-five hundred feet per second. That's like four times faster than a .45-caliber round. Just one of these bullets would rip your heart out through your spine if you were wearing five suits of body armor, which you ain't."
Figaroa couldn't help notice that he wasn't making much of an impression on his audience.
"It's got about as much rise as a .22 pistol," he continued doggedly. "So when I start shooting, it ain't too likely I'm going to get my aim screwed up by the recoil. It fires at a rate of 950 rounds a minute." Figaroa dramatically lowered the front grip and aimed it two-handed at the front of that damn T-shirt. "Now what do you have to say for yourself, smart-ass?"
"I say whoop-de-do, Figgy. Hey, is that thing made out of plastic?"
Figaroa could have explained that the MP-7 was, in fact, constructed using a polyamide material reinforced with carbon fiber. This exotic composite possessed greater tensile strength than aluminum but made the weapon extremely lightweight not even three pounds with a full magazine. But Figaroa was too furious to explain all that, and a second later he was too surprised to say anything.
The machine pistol was no longer in his possession. Remo Vu had it. He actually had a finger in the barrel and was peering at the very expensive weapon with a slight twitch of amusement on his mouth.
Then he pinched the stock of the weapon with two fingers. The entire rear end crumbled.
"I think they should have stuck with steel, don't you?" Remo observed.
Figaroa was now on his third major emotional shift in the past seven heartbeats: his confusion turned to outrage, even as part of his brain was trying to reconcile the impossible thing he just witnessed.
"You can't do that!" Figaroa blurted, not sure himself what point he was trying to make.
"Can. Did." Remo spidered his fingers around the machine pistol, and Figaroa watched it disintegrate as if it were a bread stick.
"You asshole! You know how much that cost me?"
"Chill, Figgy, you'll ruin your appetite. First thing on the menu tonight is a hertz doughnut. Ever have a hertz doughnut?"
Rage and disbelief battling for dominance in his head, Michelangelo Figaroa never saw the hand come at him, fingers pinching his earlobe. And then Figaroa felt pain. Whopping pain. He opened his mouth but nothing came out, and tears rolled down his face-that kind of pain.
"Hurts, don't it?" Remo quipped, then looked expectant.
Figaroa tried to nod, but the pain paralyzed him. He managed to shudder a little.
"I guess you've heard that one. You know, nobody laughs at my jokes," Remo complained. "Now, let's get this first little bit of business over and done with. Listen closely."
Figaroa swiveled his bulging eyes to Remo, which was about all he could do to prove he was listening. "Okay, here's something you'll want to keep in mind," Remo said. "It's about the pain."
Figaroa knew about the pain. His whole existence was pain.
"I made the pain," Remo began.
Figaroa wanted to say "Oh, yes, I understand and I hope you realize I'm being extremely cooperative," but his vocal cords were locked up.
"The important part..." Remo added slowly. Figaroa quivered in anticipation.
"Is that I can make it stop." Figaroa blinked in agreement.
"Now, Mr. Fig, would you like me to make it, ahem, stop?"
More blinking. "Yes? No? Maybe?" Frantic, teary-eyed blinking.
"Okay," Remo said reasonably. "One blink yes, two blinks no."
With more determination than he had ever mustered for anything in his forty-seven years of life, Michelangelo Figaroa blinked just one time.
"Oh. Okay."
Remo let go, and the pain was just gone. Completely. As if it had never been there.
"You wouldn't try anything sneaky?" Remo wondered aloud.
Figaroa worked his jaw and shrugged, amazed and relieved. He was perfectly okay. His ear wasn't even bleeding. He didn't know what Remo Vu had done to him, but it left him without a scratch.
It also left him as mad as hell. "Figgy, I asked you a question."
Figaroa reached for his backup piece but found his second holster empty. A new collection of metal lumps rolled out of Remo's hand. They were all that was left of Figaroa's precious old 9mm Glock.
"You son of a-!"
"Very nice couple from Arizona." Remo took Figaroa by the ear again.
The first pain had been excruciating, but that was nothing. A new explosion of fire filled Figaroa's skull and cascaded down his spine like a lava river. He started to scream.
Something like a steel vise clamped around his jaw.
"Use your inside voice, Fig," Remo said. He released the ear and the pain vanished. "Eat your dinner."
"What?" Michelangelo Figaroa sobbed.
"You heard me. Eat up."
Figaroa tried to bolt from the booth, not once but twice. He scooted no more than an inch before the pain pinchers were on his ear again. Tears of frustration on his face, he began to eat.
A minute later Figaroa's companions in crime entered the restaurant.
"Hey, Mikey, you okay?" asked a mountain of flesh under an ugly mess of wavy black hair. His partner was a bald cherub, just as wide but a foot shorter. Neither of them looked like they wanted to become friends with the man named Remo.
"I'm fine," Figaroa said, voice cracking with strain. "Leave us alone."
"Hey, Mikey, you eating a salad?"
"Hey, Mikey, you been cryin'?"
Figaroa quivered like a poodle standing at the back door with a bursting bladder. He could have ordered his men to gun down Remo Vu, but th
e memory of the pain was too vivid. He couldn't risk it. He was a reborn coward.
"Go away," he ordered.
"Sure you okay, Mikey?"
"Get lost, would ya!"
The pair left the restaurant hesitantly. Not until Figaroa had polished off his fourth salad did Remo begin asking questions.
"Tell me about your inventory problems, Figgy," Remo said, sliding the first plate of meatballs and pasta in front of the Mob boss.
"I got to eat this, too?"
"Yes. Answer the question."
"I got no inventory problems." Figaroa distastefully pushed the first forkful of spaghetti into his mouth.
"What about all the freaked-out junkies uptown?"
"Hey, they didn't freak out on my stuff!"
"Yuck. Say it-don't spray it." Remo wiped tomato sauce spatters off the tablecloth in front of him. "I heard you sold poisoned crack. Bad crack. Turned a bunch of peace-loving crack heads into violent lunatics. Four people died, Figgy."
"Maybe it was some of my regular customers that got all wired and went all crazy, but my stuff didn't do it."
Remo watched the mobster closely. "You're telling the truth," he said resignedly.
"Damn straight!"
"Eat your dinner."
"What for I have to eat more of this crap? I told you the truth, didn't I?"
Remo didn't seem to hear him, but one hand was suddenly on Figaroa's ear. The fingers held Figaroa's earlobe with so little pressure that the crime boss almost couldn't feel it. Still, the threat alone would have convinced him to kiss his own sister on the lips. He shoveled in more spaghetti and meatballs.
"Okay, so who did supply the bad stuff?" Remo asked. Figaroa just shrugged.
"You know."
Figaroa swallowed hard. "I don't know, I swear on my mother's grave."
"Got any suspicions?"
"No. Uh-uh."
"A hint? A clue? Back-fence gossip? Give me something, Figgy."
"I heard they was freebies."
"Yeah? That means somebody is trying to muscle his way in."
"You'd think, but it wasn't that way. It was just five or six giveaways, and it was just the one time. If somebody wanted to take my business he would have unloaded a whole shitload of cheap junk."
Remo looked dejected.
"It has got to be the Latinos," Figaroa said.
"It's not the Latinos. I questioned Jorge Moroza this afternoon, and he said it was you. Eat your dinner." Figaroa was dismayed when Remo Vu pushed a second plate of tepid pasta in front of him. "I'm full up," he complained, but he dug in.
"You think you got problems?" Remo said. "Upstairs has got me out here playing freaking Columbo. They've got more computer hardware than the IRS, and Smith puts me on the street to try to figure out what's going down."
Figaroa listened desperately, looking for any tidbit of information that would tell him who this man was and what he wanted-and how he did what he did. So what did this mean about Upstairs and computers? The guy had to be a Fed, right? But not like any Fed that Figaroa had ever heard of.
"And all I get for my trouble is a bunch of ethnic attitude from you and Moroza," Remo continued. "You two are a real pair of curly-lip slimeballs. The only way to tell you apart is by the accents."
Figaroa gagged. He had been likened to Moroza once before, and the fool who made the comparison was compost. This time he decided to let the insult pass.
Remo was on a roll. "Cripes, between Moroza's favorite restaurant and this place I've got a coating of grease in my lungs that'll take me a week to hack up. And you know what the worst thing is? All this effort is for nothing. 'Cause when it comes to providing me information, you're just as useless as he was."
Figaroa caught the past-tense reference and knew with certainty that his archenemy Moroza was dead. That should have made him happy. It didn't. He knew who was next on Remo Vu's list. He slurred something through a mouthful of meatball.
"Don't talk with your mouth full."
Figaroa forced himself to swallow the partially chewed mush. "I know something."
"No, you don't."
"I do! I swear I got something that'll help you break this thing open!"
Remo rolled his eyes, seeing right through Figaroa's bluff. So Figaroa was going to die.
Then came salvation. It appeared in the form of Angelo Vichensi and Franco Ansoti, his right-hand men. They had sensed trouble when they came in the first time, and now they were back to put things right. They emerged silently from either side of the booth with their weapons aimed at Remo Vu. Can't-miss shots. Remo Vu wasn't even looking in their direction
"Shoot him!" Figaroa bleated.
The shots never happened. Remo Vu reached up as if to scratch his right shoulder. Angelo Vichensi and Franco Ansoti fell over.
"Oh, my God!" cried the waitress, who stopped dead as she emerged from the kitchen.
"We'll need clean forks for Mr. Fig," said the man whose name was Remo.
Figaroa half rose from his seat so he could see the bodies of his bodyguards. One inch of a fork handle protruded from a tiny wound in Angelo's forehead. Franco had a nasty opening in his throat where his Adam's apple had been.
"My men."
"Killed by cutlery," Remo said. "I could hear those two tromping around in the kitchen like a pair of walruses. But don't worry about it. You don't need them anymore, Fig."
"I don't?"
"Eat up."
Figaroa didn't even consider disobeying. He used his hands.
"Hello? Forks?" Remo said to the paralyzed waitress. "And whatever happened to that cherry pie?"
Chapter 3
Greg Grom pulled the rental Buick to the curb and extracted the photocopied newspaper article. The editorial from a concerned citizen was titled Nashville's House Of Shame.
"The Nashville Police Department has raided the house ten times in eight months. When will they put some of these resources behind a long-term solution?"
The concerned citizen had included the address of the building in hopes of embarrassing the owner into taking action, such as locking the place up. It didn't help. Nothing helped. The dilapidated three-flat continued to serve as a flophouse for crack users and sellers.
Just what Grom was looking for.
The building was a trash magnet, the sidewalk piled with soggy paper and other unidentifiable filth. Guess the residents don't have much civic pride, Grom joked silently to relieve his own tension.
He was startled when one of the trash heaps moved, looking at him with baleful eyes.
The human ruin that he had mistaken for a pile of garbage began to lose interest when Grom just sat there. The head swayed and the eyes narrowed to slits as catatonia reclaimed him or, possibly, her.
Grom lowered the window four inches and called out, "Hello, you there. I have free samples."
The eye slits became as round as quarters and the heap of trash staggered to its feet. At the same time a head emerged from the half-open front door and shouted, "D'you say free samples?"
"Free samples," Grom said.
The human trash pile reached out one shaking hand, and Grom fed a small package through the window opening. The hand snatched at it, and Grom withdrew his hand in panic. The human trash pile missed the little package and fell to the ground, scrambling for it.
The woman from the building was eyeing him suspiciously and approaching Grom's car with her arms crossed resolutely. She was black, twenty-something, and her limp clothing and sallow skin showed the effects of dramatic weight loss.
"Why you giving free samples?"
"It's a method of damaging the local narcotics traffickers' hold on market share."
"You doin' what now?"
Grom winced. "I want a piece of the action," he said, the words sounding stilted.
She sniffed disdainfully. "You think Fumar is gone like you taking some of his what-choo-call 'market'?"
"That's between me and Fumar."
"Maybe I get Fumar right now an
d see what he says about that."
Other faces now peered from the dingy darkness of the half-opened door and the shattered windows. They all had the starving look of addicts, ruled by a nasty craving that they would do anything to satiate.
Grom saw the same need in the black woman's eyes. Her bluster couldn't mask it. He was already on firm ground.
"Look," he said reasonably, "you don't have to take any if you don't want any."
The woman scowled at the human trash pile as he or she crept into the nearest smelly alley with Grom's little plastic bag.
"I guess Fumar ain't goin' be after us 'cause we took some freebies. But he sure goin' be after you, white bread."
"You let me worry about Fumar." He forced a reassuring grimace and thrust a plastic sample bag through the window.
She took it and hurried into the condemned building. That had to have been the signal the others were waiting for, because the crack house residents came pouring out. Suddenly it was Halloween, and Grom couldn't hand out his treats fast enough to satisfy the eager queue of red-eyed ghouls outside his car window.
When the last of them had scurried back inside, Grom still had three samples in his grocery sack. The black woman reappeared, chin bobbing to unheard music. The free sample had improved her mood.
"I was wondering if you had more samples, white bread," asked the emaciated woman, who inserted her face in the window opening.
"Here you go," Grom said pleasantly; passing them to her.
"You okay, white bread."
"I'm more than okay," Grom said. "I'm a great guy."
She nodded slowly, then vigorously. "You sure are the greatest."
"I'm the nicest guy you ever met. That guy Fumar? He's an asshole. He's always ripping you off."
"Yeah. Yeah! Fucker!"
Grom spoke carefully now. "You are going to tell everybody what a bad person Fumar is."
"Tell 'em?" she cried. "I can do more'n that!"
The crack heads jittered out of the condemned building, agitated and looking for focus. Grom spoke loudly and hurriedly. "Fumar is a very bad man. He is always ripping you off. You want to tell him how mad you are." The crack heads showed rapt attention now.
"All of you, you hate Fumar and you want to spread the word," Grom exhorted. "Tell everyone what a bad man Fumar is."
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