“Apparently so,” Peter replied, glancing across the room at his reflection in the mirror, and quickly looking away in shame. “But I’ve had worse. We still on?”
“We are on,” Tarik said. “Meet me at the usual place in thirty minutes.”
“Better make it forty-five,” Peter said. “I need a little more time to put my head in a bucket of ice.”
“You are too hard on yourself,” Tarik said. “What you need is a good woman.”
“What I need is a good score,” Peter replied.
“Then get here as quickly as you can,” Tarik said, “and you shall have it.”
The phone went dead in Peter’s hand.
He put the receiver back on the cradle and then slowly, gingerly began to pull himself together.
He showered and shaved and got himself into some semi-respectable clothes. He was sorting through his messenger bag to make sure he had everything he needed for the meeting, when he discovered an envelope full of cash tucked into a side pocket.
The envelope was entirely unmarked. The cash inside was nowhere near what he needed to get Big Eddie off his back, but it was certainly enough to keep him afloat while he hustled up a more substantial score.
He must have had an even more interesting night than he had thought.
* * *
Downstairs in the cramped and seedy hotel lobby, Peter fumbled for his sunglasses before daring to venture out into the unforgiving Iraqi sun. As he did so, the clerk furtively motioned to him over the desk.
The fellow was a scrawny scrap of an old man who couldn’t have been more than five foot two and had a face like a mummified child. His name was—if Peter’s addled brain was remembering correctly—Walid, and he could be counted on to keep his mouth shut, in return for a few extra dinar. Which was the reason Peter always stayed at this miserable excuse for a hotel when he was in town for business.
Somehow, that deeply ingrained force of habit had steered him here, despite his blacked-out state the night before.
“Ahalan,” Peter said, ambling casually over to the desk. “What’s up, Wally?”
“A tall, blond American woman was looking for you,” Walid said, leaning in and speaking without moving his thin, stubbled lips. “She said she was FBI. I told her you were out.”
“Good man,” Peter replied, slipping a few American bills into Walid’s bony hand.
The last thing in the world he needed was the damn FBI sniffing around his business. His instinct told him to cut and run, but he couldn’t afford to pass up an opportunity to get Big Eddie off his back. He needed to shake this hungover fog and bring his “A” game, or the gangster was going to be the least of his worries.
He put on his sunglasses, and walked out of the hotel.
The author would like to thank Al Guthrie, Steve Saffel, Noreen O’Toole, Anna Songco, Lisa Fitzpatrick, Nick Landau, Vivian Cheung, Alice Nightingale, Natalie Laverick, Angela Park, Rob Chiappetta, Glen Whitman, Joel Wyman, Nathan Long, and Stephen Blackmoore.
Christa Faust is the author of a variety of media tie-ins and novelizations for properties such as the Fringe trilogy, Supernatural, Final Destination, and Snakes on a Plane. She also writes hardboiled crime novels, including the Edgar Award-nominated Money Shot, Choke Hold, and the Butch Fatale series. She lives in Los Angeles. Her website is christafaust.net.
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