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Gregor looked down at the guy who’d been about to smash his car window. Big guy, Asian. Suit, preppy striped tie. Twin shiners and what looked to be a broken nose. He looked to be in his late thirties. He’d never seen him before.
He bent over the guy and felt around in his pockets. No gun, no car keys. A wallet and a cell phone. He took both, left the house key. Flipped open the wallet to an identification card claiming the Asian guy at his feet was Leonard Connelly, United States Air Marshal.
The picture looked like the guy, but Gregor figured the badge was a fake. As far as he knew, federal air marshals didn’t prowl around public parking lots after dark, looking for cars to break into. And Leonard Connelly wasn’t even close to this dude’s name. No chance.
Maybe he was a gang banger dressed to blend in with the worker bees. Did Pittsburgh have any Asian gangs? Hell if he knew. Or maybe he was a worker bee. Some pervert who spent his days shuffling paper and his nights scoping out downtown parking lots looking for women to attack. Whatever he was, he was a problem.
Gregor tried to decide what to do about him. He did not make it a habit to kill people for free. Fact was, he didn’t kill too many people for pay, either. Mostly, he was hired muscle.
Got his start in with the Russian mob in Baltimore. But, the gamblers had all gone online and the johns usually paid up front. So, there wasn’t so much work anymore. He’d branched out. Freelanced.
Everyone understood a man had to feed his family, and the old guys still called on him once in a while. But, mainly, Gregor worked for other freelancers—small-time bookies, a couple drug pushers, the occasional loan shark.
Business was good enough that he’d hired his sister’s son Anton. And they started marketing themselves to a higher class of criminal. Some clients just wanted him to threaten a guy who was making noises like he might back out of a deal. Most wanted him to rough somebody up over a business transaction gone bad. Then there were guys like Irwin. Irwin wanted his files back by whatever means necessary. He’d said it like that, all intense and meaningful. Irwin was paying them a boatload. So he’d get his damned files.
Gregor popped the trunk. He really wished Anton wasn’t out of commission. This guy looked heavy. Gregor braced himself for the pain he knew was coming. Then he hoisted the man over his shoulder and dumped him into the trunk.
Irreparable Harm (A Legal Thriller) Page 43