by Henry Roi
Shocker's features waned, her voice low, retrieving from memory. “You reminded me of something Coach used to tell me, a lesson he gave to all the pros he worked with.” She cleared her throat and strengthened her voice. “ 'It doesn't matter if they buy a ticket to see you win, or buy a ticket to see you lose. As long as they buy a ticket.' ” She let out a heavy breath.
Blondie tried smiling, but faltered, remembering that was her coach, too, and he was no longer around to impart such wisdom. “Yeah. That sounds like Eddy. That's basically what I did to promote the book. Bad publicity is still publicity.”
“How did you get into crime, Razor?” Bobby asked me, steering the conversation away from tears.
“I learned how to work on cars from the bikers who raised me. I stole them. Sold them.”
“Sold them?” Ace prompted.
“Sometimes I would switch VIN plates and just sell the stolen vehicles. Then I figured out a better scam. I would place ads on the Internet claiming I had high end cars- BMW's, Mercedes, cars of that class. I posted random pictures I found in Motor Trend to make the ads look legit. People would call me and negotiate. It took a week or two sometimes, but eventually someone would offer cash to get a better deal. I'd meet them somewhere and take it.”
“So you never actually had the cars?” Ace asked.
“Didn't need them.”
“Whoa,” he breathed.
Shocker's head shook in disapproval throughout my story. She told me, “Shame. All that talent, and it was wasted on scams.”
I mugged her. “Okay, Miss Goody Pooh Shoes. I'm not ragging you for escaping prison and being a regular on America's Most Wanted. Don't stick your prissy nose too far in the air.”
She still shook her head, but smiled. Laughed. “Excusez-moi, Mister President.”
“Dear,” Ace said to his girl. “Did the big ebony tank really throw someone through a window?”
She looked at him and nodded, on the verge of a huge giggle. “And I thought I was mad at those guys. Bobby jerked that idiot out of the car and tossed him like a dirty diaper.”
“It was an accident,” Bobby said defensively. “I told the man I'd pay for his window.”
“He'll really pay for it, huh?” I said to Shocker. She nodded with a proud twist of her lips.
I turned to Bobby. “I wouldn't sweat it, big guy. That dude was happy to get his daughter's birthday present back. He's good.”
Shocker frowned up. “I can't believe those assholes took a bunch of costume jewelry.”
“Was it valuable?” Ace asked.
“To them it was,” I said. “To their eight-year-old daughter it was priceless. Those gangsters likely took it just to be cruel. They would have thrown it away.”
“Fuckers,” Blondie said with feeling. “Got what they deserved.” She lapsed into silence, looking a little hurt from missing all the fun. She pointed her delicate chin at me. “Where's the video, Raz? I want to see it.”
“Big Guns recorded some of it from the car. It's on his phone.”
She nodded, Thank you, and grabbed her phone off the desk to send a message to her Viet friend.
I looked out the door. The street lights far below us had been flooding the ground with eerie orange hues for over an hour. The din of heavy Friday night traffic echoed around the garage, condos behind us, out into the open, dark blue and purple sky, cloudy and moonless over the Gulf. A premonition absorbed my thoughts as I inhaled the cooling air, one of caution. I stood and walked outside. Looked around, knowing I wouldn't see anything but the roof of the garage, our vehicles, the open air beyond its edges. Am I forgetting something?
I decided to take a quick peek at the surveillance monitors, walking over to the other shed, the lab. I reached for the door handle and the fucking power went out. The sudden blackness inside the drone shed hushed my squad.
“Forget to pay your bill, Mister President?” Shocker said, walking up next to me. Everyone followed her, Blondie looking startled, them smiling.
Their humor vanished when they saw my face. “They're here,” I told them, tense, muscles priming for action.
“How do you know?” Shocker said, also fully alert.
“Because they disabled the generator.” I turned and jogged the twenty feet to the roof entrance. “You know you should have installed a generator up here, you stupid MFer,” I derided myself. And you should have been monitoring the cameras too…
I skidded to a stop in front of the entrance right as the thick steel door unlocked and began sliding open. My mind raced. How did they unlock it? Remote power source attached to the key pad circuit. They have a pro that hacked the code… Do they have guns? Of course they do, dumbass! They know goddamn well they can't beat you with their hands!
I had no time to think of a defense, or even to make a run for the repel rope we keep tied near the edge of the roof (which was a Capt. Jack Sparrow move I would never do). My only chance was to try and bullshit my way out of immediate death. How did they find us? I couldn't blame anyone but myself. I knew the consequences of working with a team. That's why I've never done it before.
The door clunked to a stop, fully open. “Hi pal,” I told Diep's scowling mug and the half dozen gunmen in front of him, semi-auto pistols twinkling death in their tense hands.
Diep didn't respond to my greeting. They pushed through the entrance. I stepped backwards, palms facing them. The gangsters spread out around me, three of them drawing down on my crew. The other three backed up Diep, their incensed leader that stared at me with a murderous hunger. I eyed the gun barrels warily. Looked at the Elder Tiger. His right arm was in a cast up to the elbow, dark blue fiberglass. Bruises stood out around his sunglasses, chin beard making his mouth remarkably merciless. His glasses flashed a glance at my crew's angry looks. He said to me, “Razor. The notorious con artist and boxing champion.”
“Retired and retired,” I said amiably.
“So you quit the confidence game to get into extortion rackets? Seems odd. I got your message. You had me convinced you were really a new rival gang. Until my investigation turned up the truth.” He motioned to one of his subordinates, a muscle-bound gangster in a blue warm-up suit. He looked at his boss with round eyes in a mixed, freckled face. Diep told him in a disappointed tone, “Phong. Anh em cua may bi mat mac. May phai lay mac cha lai.”
My brain heard, “Phong. Your brothers have lost face. You have to face nose and face.”
Phong, the leader of the 211, stepped forward and swung his gun at my head. It was quick, but I saw it coming through Fight mode eyes and shifted back, his arm brushing mine. I checked myself from counter punching and just pushed him away. Phong swung again, faster, missing without me even moving, anger reddening his face, neck, arms.
I gave Diep a reproachful look. “What? You think I'm just going to stand here and let him hit me?”
“You're right, of course. What was I thinking?” Diep looked at Phong. “Shoot him in the leg.”
“No you're NOT!” Blondie shouted, storming past the gangsters pointing guns at her. They yelled in their foreign tongue, grabbed her, and I waved to her it was okay before she attacked them or they shot her.
I looked at Phong, who uncannily resembled Bolo Yeung from my favorite martial arts movies. My legs squirmed uneasily. He smiled at me, raised the gun. Took careful aim and must have thought I'd just stand there and let him plug me. What's up with that?
He squeezed the trigger as I darted to the side. The bullet's sonic boom was swallowed by the open air, the round taking a chunk out of the concrete just behind me. Phong glanced at Diep, deepened his snarl and squeezed off two more shots at my legs. The years of boxing drills enabled my legs to move and change directions very explosively. But not so fast as to avoid a 9 mm slug moving 1200 feet per second.
The first one missed, ricocheting off the concrete, making the gangsters around Blondie flinch as she screeched over the bullet's whine through the air. The second shot hit me in the left shin, barely
missing the bone. It burned a hole through my leg and exited at the side of my calf, sending a message to my brain to demand that I jump up and down and scream in pain. I obliged, hopping on one foot, gasping loud curses, and Phong stepped forward with an inspired swing of his weapon, the hot barrel slamming into my cheekbone, sizzling my lip. I went down.
“Rarrr,” I sucked in through clenched teeth. I tried to control my breathing, gripping my leg above the wound, as if that would make it stop hurting. On the plus side, it felt so bad I didn't even feel my swelling face.
“Now. That's better,” Diep said, as if training a dog to sit on command.
“You piece of shit,” Shocker told the Viet overlord. Through my trembling vision I noticed the girl-beast was so hyped up she was glowing like some kind of steroidal angel. I expected to see wings sprout from her muscled back and fold down in anger. Ace watched her and the guns pointed at her, terrified, hand gripping her wrist tightly.
Focus on the problem in your hands, my leg throbbed. I glanced at my girl to make sure she was okay. She watched me so intently, ready to go wide-open-lunatic at any indication from me. Bobby stood behind her, head and shoulders taller, huge hands gripping her arms, more for consolation than restraint.
“Keep an eye out for their friend the sniper,” Diep told his men. He looked closely at Bobby, Ace. “Was it one of you?” He held up his cast, rubbed it with his good hand, nails perfectly manicured, gold watch gleaming wealth. “For some reason I doubt it.”
He looked around the roof slowly, shifted his attention to a methodical sweep of the condo building behind the garage. He pulled out his phone. Dialed and spoke to someone in Vietnamese. It was too quick to catch much of it, but I got the gist. He ordered more men to check the condo building. How many of them are down there?
I cursed my luck again. I wonder what, exactly, had led them to us. When it was just me and Blondie on a job I could see all the possibilities almost immediately. With more people comes more unknown variables.
Problems. Just say problems, the prick between my ears scorned.
Blood had filled my boot, disturbingly warm and syrupy. The wound was wet and weirdly numb, yet rang with fire as if a great bell was tolling reverberations of hurt up my leg and spine, into my aching neck and lolling head. I could feel the tunnel that had been bored through my calf. It told me that if I tried to stand or flex my foot in any way I would seriously regret it. My neck was straining so hard speech felt impossible. In other words, it's unlikely I could fight or talk my way out of this now.
“Wonderful,” I gasped.
“Isn't it?” Diep turned around to smile at me. “Revenge best served cold, and so forth.”
“How did you find us?” I tried to growl. It came out a low wheeze.
His eyes nearly closed in pleasure, and I recognized the tell-tale signs of a painkiller buzz. The hospital probably gave him Demerol, the lucky bastard. He was very high. Maybe he'll make mistakes… He spoke in an annoying, I Bested You voice. “A photo of her,” he pointed at Blondie, “standing six stories in the air, on this roof, with a stupendous sunset over the water behind her.” He waved grandly in the direction of the Gulf, the sky black and well past sunset. He shook his head and talked to me like a pro addressing an amateur. “You really should be more careful what you put on the Internet. Geo tags can prove very troublesome.”
I grunted in disgust. So a new team member wasn't at fault. I looked at my girl, furious. You just had to huh? I'll deal with you later.
She dropped her eyes, knowing she had messed up bad. She had broken our agreement, a Rule vital to our security: take no photos or videos where we dwell. Diep's people had found us by GPS coordinates logged in the details of a photo. A goddamn geo tag. An amateur error. She must have posted it on Facebook, Instagram, or some shit.
Diep waved his cast. “Tie them up. Take their phones.” He pushed a speed dial button on his phone, held it to his ear and shouted in rapid-fire Vietnamese while gangsters secured our hands behind us with plastic zip-ties and searched our pockets for phones.
The prick that patted me down found my razor and unsheathed it. He turned it over in his hands for a moment, smiling at the gems, stuck it in his back pocket. I told him, “I'll be coming for that.” He scowled and punched me in the stomach.
“Tie his leg, motherfucker!” Blondie demanded of Diep. “He'll bleed to death.” She studied me with intense concern, allowing her hands to be zip-tied.
Em Ho snorted at her, then looked at Shocker and bared his teeth. Last time he saw her she was wearing a skin-tight dress and brass knuckles. He rubbed the back of his head. Nodded to her and shrugged. “You extended that courtesy to me, so I will do the same.” He snapped his fingers, pointed at my leg. “He hasn't suffered enough yet, anyhow.”
One of the goons behind Diep put his gun in his waist and took several zip-ties from a pocket. He connected three of them end-to-end and wrapped it around my leg above the calf. I held my breath through the pain as he tightened it over the top of my blood soaked pants. He got blood on his thumb, made a face of disgust, wiped it off on my shirt. I wanted to hit him so terribly bad. He stood and resumed his place behind his boss. The pulse in my wound began to beat in my ears, bump, bump-bump, you-need, drugs-now.
I brightened momentarily. I still have some cocaine. I don't have to put up with this pain nonsense. I can snort it into oblivion. Hell, a bullet wound might even feel good after a dozen or so lines.
Getting ahead of yourself; you can't get to it with your hands tied and guns pointed at you, my subconscious pointed out. Genius. What are you going to do, call time out for refreshments?
“Fuck you,” I said.
Diep gave a narcotic grin and told me, “We have a lot to learn about each other, though we won't do it amorously.”
“Amorously? Did you just call me gay?” I wheezed through gritted teeth. It was becoming a chore to keep focused on him.
“I was trying to be clever, based on your vulgar comment. But I see you aren't in a mood for cleverness. So let me be more direct. If anyone is fucked, it's you.”
“How about sharing those Loratab's first?” I retorted. “I know you have some.” He frowned, glanced at his cast. “If I'm going to be gayed upon, I need to be really hammered. Preferably ODed.”
“Ha. I like you, Razor.”
“Yeah, uh, my Gaydar told me that already.” My jaw muscles ached, on the verge of locking up. I felt very dehydrated. It was unbelievably hard to keep up the dialogue, but I couldn't let myself go down without talking shit first.
Diep took his glasses off and pocketed them, eyes narrowed to wide slits. I had touched a nerve. He stepped toward me swiftly and planted his left foot, plunging forward with his right, soccer kicking my injured calf. BAM! The blow knocked me onto my side, legs jerking around awkwardly. With my arms restrained behind me I couldn't catch myself. Being in such a demeaning position in front of my crew pissed me off more than being shot did. I held in a monstrous roar of pain and rage, jaw burning well beyond the realm of normality.
“You would kick a man who's been shot and tied up,” Bobby's deep voice boomed in anger. I struggled to a sitting position, looked over at Big Swoll, who seemed bigger and more swollen through my distorted sight.
“Be patient, whoever you are, black man,” Diep told him, a slight slur hindering his words. “You'll get your turn.” He snapped his fingers, pointed at the drone shed. “Put them in there. Bring Vietech.”
Phong shouted orders in Vietnamese, and his subordinates carried me and herded my crew into the shed while he shouted more orders into his phone. The two gangsters toting me dumped me on the floor, pushed the others in. Blondie knelt over me and glared at them. The youngest gangster, who looked to be the brightest, did a thorough search through the desk, turned and looked at the books and manuals on the shelves, looking for tools we could use to escape with. The shed locked from the outside. All the tools were in the lab. We're screwed.
Maybe not… my
inner MacGyver whispered.
The thugs exited. The shed door rolled down, the latches were secured on the bottom of each side, scrape-clank, scrape-clank. It was dark without power, our eyes adjusting to the ambient glow coming under the door. Shocker, Ace and Bobby stood looking at the door. Shocker told Bobby, “Get our hands loose.”
“Boss,” he nodded to her. He bared his teeth, leaned over and flexed. The plastic zip-tie was strong and impossible for most humans to break. Bobby must have exerted several hundred pounds of pressure on it, a feat two of me couldn't do. He gave a loud grunt of satisfaction when it snapped, huge arms suddenly exploding out to his sides. Ace yelped as Bobby's fist struck him in the arm, knocking him into the steel wall.
Shocker turned her back to him. Blondie and I watched in amazement as he worked his over-developed fingers between her wrists, got a firm hold on the plastic and barked a burst of exertion, arms twitching quickly, breaking the tie with a loud pop!
Note to self: never, EVER, fuck with Bobby. The memory of Big Swoll throwing that scrub through the restaurant window came to mind and I laughed, gaining a few looks that suspected I was delirious.
Big Swoll broke mine next. The jolt made me see flashes of light in the black mist that swamped my peripheral senses. I leaned against the desk. Closed my eyes for a moment. Blondie, arms free, clenched her hands in angry indecision. I helped her out. “Babe, get my Go Juice.”
She took a breath, visibly focusing, squatted down beside me, dug her little hand in my front pocket. Undaunted by the fiery pain two feet below him, my Johnson thought about wriggling closer to her seeking fingers. I shook my head. There is something inherently wrong with me.
Her arousing search yielded a condom and a small Ziploc with approximately an eighth-of-an-ounce of cocaine in it. An “8 Ball” to all you former or current speed enthusiasts reading this. My girl's fingers quivered as she opened it, her eyes puffy and nose pink from emotion. She dipped a nail into the baggie, then held a mound of lovely white poison under my nose. I exhaled, leaned over and snorted it in one wop, groaning, tilting my head back. Shocker gave me a “Pfff” while the geek and Bobby looked on hopefully.