by Joshua Guess
The key to this was the strange transition I’d gone through when my family died. The grief, or I should say the immediate and powerful grief, lasted a long time. It broke parts of me. When I came through the worst of it, I felt like two different people.
Cultivating that divide was important in making sure Russey didn’t turn on me. The hard fact of it was that, yes, I could do terrible things. Especially to terrible people. Russey believed I felt nothing after those acts.
The reality was that I felt every death at my own hands—though there had been far less of them than Russey thought. I was very good at the sort of theater that convinced people to follow their own preconceived notions.
I’d killed in front of Russey. The one whose neck I’d slashed in that example was one of our own. He had threatened our entire operation, extorting us for money. When he opened his mouth about Russey paying up so his children wouldn’t see him in prison, I’d stepped in.
Russey thanked me for that, but the callow brutality of it and my apparent lack of reaction pushed his estimation of me into dark territory.
He didn’t see me toss and turn over it as I lost sleep, and for my own safety I could never tell him. Being more competent than your boss is a good way to get fired in most jobs. In mine it was a sure way to die.
4
Pushing away the memories was harder than I expected. I left Russey’s house an hour later with everything I wanted even if his promises to rein in Robby had the familiar rote sound to them I always heard. As far as that went, the only ace I had up my sleeve was taking a stand and refusing to cover for the kid any longer. No more bodyguards, no more cleaning up his messes. What Tom knew from his lifetime of experience, that successfully getting away with it meant never letting on that you’d done it in the first place, was lost on his son completely.
Hard lessons are often the ones best remembered. Like Tolkien said, the burned hand teaches best.
I tried to put it in the back of my mind since I had a few days to worry about it. Robby tended to go wild on weekends. I’d arranged my schedule to give me the least amount of in-person work possible for the rest of the week, and I intended to fill my free time with delicious barbecue and craft beer.
Another stop home later, I had changed into comfortable summer clothes and ditched my car. I’d get an Uber or call a regular cab if I got too drunk to walk.
Dusk in Kentucky, even in a city as large as Louisville, is beautiful. People like to compare places as if one lovely sunset has to be better than another, but I don’t. I’ve watched night fall over the Rockies, on two oceans, and from the big open sky of places like Wyoming. Every one of them was perfect in its own way, but Louisville grew on me.
Even the tall buildings in the middle of the city were framed by trees. Move a quarter mile from that cluster of new, glimmering structures reaching for the sky and you can’t walk more than a block without finding shade. The smell of the river, that wet and earthy tang of teeming life, added a note to the heady perfume of trees and flowers. Humidity in the Ohio Valley heat made being outside a trial as often as not, but not tonight.
I stopped by an ATM and withdrew a few hundred bucks. I tucked the money into my front pocket right next to the tiny, compact Glock I reserved for casual clothing. The foot traffic wasn’t bad for a weekday, and my constantly scanning eyes didn’t register any dangers.
When I was in the army, I never worried about any of that stuff. I was a staff member in an office that handled a lot of intelligence, often highly classified, but I wasn’t one of the guys out there gathering it. It was only after I went back to being a civilian that things changed.
Crossing an intersection, a guy knocked into my shoulder hard enough to spin me halfway around. He was coming from the cluster of bars I was heading toward and smelled like he tried to drink an entire brewery.
“Watch yer ass, buddy,” he said in a slippery growl, even though he’d run into me.
He wavered on his feet, an easy target. In my head, the possibilities rolled out like the credits of a movie. I could take him down in one hit if I wanted to. A shot to the throat was potentially fatal. A kick to the side of the knee would cripple. Even a headbutt, delivered without warning, would probably do the trick.
Instead I raised my hands to placate him. “Sorry, man. My fault,” I said, though we both knew it wasn’t.
Some things about a person don’t change. Me? I’m the first to avoid a fight if I can. I have no personal pride. Tom Russey and I are the same in that regard. What do I care if some stranger thinks I’m weak or unwilling to go ten rounds with him? It’s an attitude I drill into my operatives with varying degrees of success.
The mean drunk tottered off and I went on my way. The darkening sky painted the last crescent of bright clouds in pinks and purples with burning orange edges that matched the buzzing street lights ahead of me. It was a gorgeous evening.
Like a cartoon dog, I followed the scent of slow-cooked food and the heady aroma of hops and barley to my destination. One second I ambled down a sidewalk lined with young Linden trees between me and the road, the next I was stepping off the curb and turning left onto a closed-off street with a row of buildings lit by open fires and garish neon. The sound of a hundred slurred conversations washed over me.
Approaching the nearest vendor, I glanced at the menu. “Two pulled pork with sweet sauce and large fries, please,” I said to the guy manning the table.
“No beer?” he asked through a mustache right out of 1970’s porn.
I shook my head. “I’m gonna grab something from one of the craft tables.”
His lips twisted. “Must be nice to be able to afford that stuff.”
I smiled at him as winningly as I could manage. “It really is.” I took my food two minutes later and decided not to visit that jackass again. Intellectually I knew his profit margins for the night rested mostly on selling cheap beer to people by the cup, but making me look like an asshole for not buying it isn’t really the way to win me over. I made a mental note to talk to Amanda in the morning about looking into adding his business.
I wasn’t petty enough to go after him for being a jerk, but he got my attention and I always kept an eye open for potential investments. People who worked with the public usually put on a good face. That he hadn’t implied there might be a weakness there to exploit. Even if there was, I doubted a barbecue place would be useful as a listening post. Maybe a money laundry, but even that was a distant possibility.
More than anything it was my obsession with details coming into play. Once the idea lodged in my head, it didn’t leave. The key to success at almost anything is grinding away, doing the work, and occasionally getting lucky in what you find.
To do that, you have to keep your eyes open.
I spent the next hour and a half sitting on a stone planter box near the edge of the crowd, eating artery-clogging food and drinking stupidly expensive beer. I let the gentle buzz turn into a relaxed sort of drunk. The music was better than I had any reason to hope or expect, considering how bad it usually was a these things. A local bluegrass group covered a wide array of up-tempo metal songs on banjos and steel guitars. After them came an eighties tribute band, the lead singer a woman who could mimic just about every front man made famous during the era of giant hair and bad spandex.
Watching a crowd takes the right frame of mind. I was always a fan of people watching, but in large numbers you need to reorient. It’s not a school of fish where everyone acts and reacts in instinctive unison. People are messy and individual and no matter what historians tell you, those qualities remain even in large gatherings.
At the end of my sixth beer a younger woman tentatively approached me and gestured toward the planter, which was empty except for me. “Mind if I sit here?”
I raised the bottle and gave it a little shake. “Free country.”
The response made her pause. “I can sit somewhere else if you don’t…”
I shrugged. “Really. It’s fine.”<
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The profound relief on her face was out of step with the minor convenience of having somewhere to sit. “Thanks, man. This is gonna sound terrible, but I was hoping if I sat here with you, the dude following me around would stop.” She sat as she said it, pushing a lock of dark hair behind the curve of a pale ear. She produced a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, offering me a smoke.
“No thanks,” I told her. “I don’t mind being used.”
Her eyebrows rose and she stared at me, cigarette unlit. “Um, I don’t know what you think I said, but…”
I frowned, then laughed. “No, I meant being used to keep a jerk from bothering you.”
She smiled around and lit her smoke, taking a deep drag. “Okay, as long as we’re on the same page. I came to listen to that bluegrass band, but you know how these things go. A girl can’t have a good time by herself without someone thinking she’s trolling for dick.”
“Right?” I said. “I do a lot of these little shows, too. It’s not as bad for me, but it happens a lot. Sitting alone is like the bat-signal for people who think you have to be looking for a hookup.”
She glanced down at my hands, as people almost always do. “You are here alone, though. Shitty preconceived notions being what they are, usually guys who come stag are looking to hook up.”
I considered telling her I was a widower, but despite the depressing ease with which I could make the statement now, it was always a stake in the heart of any conversation. People react to it in a lot of ways, and almost never well. Usually it’s a backpedal as their brains try to work out whether there were signs, that maybe they should have known.
Which is crazy, obviously. How could they? And the words that would follow, the well-intentioned but ultimately false kindnesses, only served to underline the loss.
“I’m not most guys,” I replied. I said it with a joking lightness I didn’t feel. Not that I felt all that bad—the alcohol did its job nicely. “I just like the music and the atmosphere. Talking to people now and then is also good.” I glanced at her and noted a few things. She had no food or drink. She wore worn sneakers frayed at the seams. Her purse was ancient leather whose better days were likely anchored in the Bush administration. She looked broke.
I stood up. “I’m gonna grab another beer. Maybe a sandwich. It’ll only take a minute. You want anything?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s fine.”
“My treat,” I said. “I’m splurging tonight. Let me get you something.”
The negotiation was short and in the end it took pointing out that she couldn’t actually stop me short of physical violence. The trip was fast—most people were comfortably ensconced at tables, the food rush over—but even so a guy had taken my seat when I got back.
“Hi,” I said pleasantly as I stopped in front of the planter, beer and sandwiches in hand. I gave the woman, who looked annoyed beyond belief, a wink. “I didn’t know anyone would be joining us. I’m Steve. Who are you?”
I put out a hand, the intention behind it as fake as the name I’d given. The other guy, a biggish fella wearing a dark pink collared shirt and bright blond hair, glowered at me. He narrowed his eyes at the proffered hand and then raised the glare to my face.
“I’m busy,” the guy said, a hard slur carving a deep wake through the words. “Talking to my girl here.”
The woman, whose name I’d never gotten because our casual conversation never got that far, said nothing. She said nothing loudly.
“That’s weird,” I said, still pleasant. “She told me she wanted to go somewhere with me and talk. You never came up.” I put the food down on the stone of the planter. “Isn’t that right?”
“Sure,” she said without much enthusiasm.
Blondie came to his feet in a wavering stagger. I was close to buttered myself, but one of us was acting like a frat boy asshole and the other was a trained killer.
He wasn’t going to hit me, or at least I don’t think that was his intention. Like any preening rooster, he wanted to get in my face and be dominant. Were it just me, sure. Go nuts. Be the big man.
Instead I halted any momentum he wanted to build by grabbing the finger he pointed at my chest. Whatever he’d been about to say was choked off in a muffled squeal as I bent the finger back and used the leverage to spin him on his heels.
Joint locks are fun.
Standing behind him, wrist twisted and finger nearly dislocated, I dug a knuckle into the top of his contorted hand. Finding the sweet spot was easy. I’d be lying if I said the gasp of pain wasn’t satisfying. He struggled—people always struggle—but a few tweaks of his captured limb convinced him to stand down.
“You’re going to leave this young woman alone,” I said loudly enough for both of them to hear. “In fact, you’re just going to leave. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and pretend it’s the booze making you act like a jackass. If you agree, nod. If you don’t, I’ll break a finger every time you say no.”
“I’ll go, I’ll go, Christ,” Blondie said.
When I let him go, the woman was already gone.
5
The next day I worked—and nursed a hangover—from home. The particulars of our businesses were simple enough in general, though it was hard to get through a single deal or even a single day without some kind of problem.
The original money Russey saved up had been split several ways. Some was laundered to provide clean capital for our own businesses. Legit ones. We started with construction, and since the housing crash had left a long-term need for apartments rather than houses, we filled a market growing cities like Louisville are perpetually in demand for by building them.
We also made cash investments in a wide variety of local businesses. Like Tre Fratelli, we took a small percentage in return for driving business to them. Most never asked how we did it, which was good because telling wasn’t on the menu.
The reason most criminals deal in material items is because of the nature of supply and demand. You steal some diamonds, there’s going to be a guy who will pay you for diamonds. And we did a fair amount of that. Really, the purely shady side of the business was split evenly between electronic warfare and expanding on the sort of fixer work Russey had always done.
We facilitated deals. Occasionally we’d pull a job of our own. While the regular income of transporting illicit goods wasn’t something we were interested in given the risk, once in a while a client would need something smuggled in a pinch. We didn’t do a lot of one thing, choosing instead to spread the work broadly. No single element brought in a ton of money on its own, but combined?
Well, we did alright.
Amanda and her team of dedicated black hats spent a lot of time making sure our investments paid off. It lacked the definitive nature of a stolen gem, but knowing a well-built set of false social media profiles could drive business to places we had money in gave me a lot of comfort. It was time consuming on the setup, but once everything was in place, easy to maintain. The system went far beyond Facebook profiles, of course. Much of the work was subtle, from starting rumors about competitors to manipulating their computer systems to cause crashes.
Three weeks of intermittent loss of credit card machines or the ability to record orders causes a lot of chaos. Regular customers will often give up in frustration and try somewhere else. And oh, didn’t they see a post that got a lot of likes about that new Indian place down the road?
Not guaranteed, but practice made us damned good at it. In the movies, mobsters took payments for protection, which amounted to extortion. We built trust by tying our income with theirs, and fronting startup money from the small and entirely legal capital investment firm at the heart of our little empire.
It wasn’t about ruining the businesses in competition with us. Bricks through windows draw attention. It’s better to slowly pour sand in the gears. Not swift, and sometimes it doesn’t work, but in the end much safer.
All of that only touches on the day-to-day reality of the job. Keeping ever
ything as separate as possible was vital to prevent spillage in case someone was caught. Amanda’s people didn’t interact with my field operatives, for example. All communication between divisions was done through electronic dead drops with no names attached. No real-time texting or speaking.
And as with any organization, there were always human resource problems. Except as crooks, we couldn’t farm that work out. Which made Russey the CEO and me every management job below it.
I say this so it’s clear that when the phone rang after nearly ten straight hours of work, I welcomed it as a man lost at sea welcomes the sight of a boat.
“Yeah,” I said into the phone, not bothering to see who was calling.
“Boss,” Said Javier.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, knowing that if the guy was calling me in the early evening, it probably wasn’t going to be good. “Yeah. What’s up?”
Javier cleared his throat. “So, you talked to the big man. About the kid.”
“I did, yeah. I did my best, anyway. Why?”
“Just got off the phone with him,” Javier said, now sounding somewhere between depressed and angry. “He wants to pull four guys, including me, to do security for a party the kid is throwing tonight.”
A few seconds went by as I tried to parse the words into meaningful English. “You’re telling me you’ve been ordered to do this? By Tom himself?”
“Yes,” Javier said, biting off the word. “We had a thing tonight. I was supposed to be there.”
The thing was a hit on a meth operation. We were happy to move any volume of marijuana, procure mushrooms or LSD, but Tom Russey tolerated no one to make meth within the confines of our territory. We had the personnel to allow Robby his party, but I’d have much preferred Javier on the meth thing.