Guns 'n Money: Episode 1

by Ty Johnston

  Chapter 4: Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution

  Jollie pays pretty sweet for the little job we did for him, but I had five years of lost time to make up for. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a flophouse. To help raise a little dough, I hook up with a taxi company owned by the Carcinnis, landing myself one of the yellow cars that can be seen all over the city. It’s a way to make a little extra money while getting the lay of the land again. After I had been gone so long, Chisel City had changed here and there, and I want to refamiliarize myself with the old town. I get to set my own hours, make a little scratch, what could be better?

  I had been driving around for a few days, just dropped off some passengers at the airport, when my new cell phone starts ringing. It’s Tony.

  “Jollie’s got another job for us,” he tells me.

  “Like the last one?”

  “Nah. This one’s different. A repo job.”

  “A car?”

  “Nah. Some rock star’s guitar. Supposedly Jollie picked it up for him special, but now the guy’s not wanting to pay.”

  “Sounds easy enough,” I say.

  “Maybe, but this guy has security,” Tony tells me. “I picked us up a couple of baseball bats, just to even things up a little.”

  “You think we should take a piece?”

  “Nah,” Tony says. “That might up things a little too much, draw more attention than we’d want. But Jollie says if we ever want a piece, to head over to Mo’s and pick up anything we want, on Jollie’s tab.”

  Good old Jollie. Looking out for us. Mo’s is Mo’s Ammo, the spot for all the Carcinnis boys to pick up their hardware. Mo has been around for ever, as long as Jollie. Like Jollie, Mo runs a straight racket up front, selling home protection stuff to the rubes and the gun nuts, but out back is where the real hardware can be found, sometimes hot and sometimes not, but always available to the Carcinnis for the right price.

  “I’ll pick you up,” Tony says.

  “How about I pick you up,” I say in return. “A cab will stick out a lot less.”

  “Sounds good.”

  So I go pick Tony up at his place, a little apartment on the east side not far from my own pad. He’s got the address for this rock star, and it turns out to be one of the swankier hotels downtown.

  “We’re not going to get in there carrying baseball bats,” I say as I pull away from the curb, Tony in the back seat so things won’t look out of order.

  “Yeah, but we don’t go into the hotel,” Tony says. He’s already got things figured out. “This guy, he’s got a press conference this afternoon. We wait until he’s leaving out one of the back doors, then hit him before he can get in his limo.”

  “Won’t he be surrounded by security?”

  “Two or three guys tops,” Tony says. “That’s why we got the bats.”

  I hope he’s right. These security guys, usually they carry some heat. But what the hell. We live in such a coddling country nowadays, many guys who carry are too chicken shit to pull their sidearms, more afraid of going to jail or looking stupid than doing their job. On the other hand, some of these guys think they’re real cowboys. But again, what the hell. I can use the money, and it’ll be something to do.

  “Think he’ll have the guitar with him?” I ask.

  “Doesn’t matter if he does or not,” Tony says. “We put a big enough beating on this guy, he’ll want to pay up or shed the guitar.”

  We cruise around for a while to kill a little time, get something to eat from a hot dog stand, then head over to the hotel. I park us in the alley around back where the delivery trucks and stuff are parked. Sure enough, there’s a long, black limousine sitting near a back exit.

  “That’ll be his,” Tony says, pointing over my shoulder to the limo.

  “You want me to pull up closer?”

  “No, but be ready to rock and roll when we see that door open.”

  It doesn’t take long. A big goon the size of a defensive tackle comes out the back door and glances around. For a moment his eyes fall on my taxi, but then his gaze slides on by. Good thing we came in the taxi, not drawing any undo notice.

  The guy says something to somebody inside the door.

  Then Tony is out of my cab, his bat held low behind his leg. I follow from the driver’s side, leaving my door open.

  That big security guy, he’s smarter than he looks beneath his thick, bushy eyebrows. He yells something inside the hotel’s back door, then slams the door closed.

  At this point, I’m thinking the gig is up, but Tony, he keeps right on walking forward while the big guy unbuttons his dark jacket and begins to stroll toward us. I keep my distance from Tony, not wanting to afford this bodyguard guy one nice, big target, but I’m not sure it would make much difference. If this guy draws on us, he’s got us both dead to rights.

  But apparently he’s not as smart as I’d given him credit. He lets us get close. Too close.

  His eyes dark and narrowed, he opens his mouth to speak, but never gets the chance. Tony lunges with the end of his bat, butting the goon in the jaw. Despite the bodyguard’s size, he drops like a ton of bricks and is out cold.

  I giggle. What the hell? I hadn’t thought big boy would go down so easy.

  Then Tony is running for that back hotel exit, and I’m right on his heels. I’m not sure why we’re running, ’cause that back door has got to be locked.

  Still, there’s the limo driver. He’s stupid, too, and opens his door to climb out. A slam from my bat against the door makes him think twice, and he jerks the door closed and locks himself in.

  By this point, Tony is up the few concrete steps to that back door of the hotel. Whoever is on the other side lets their curiosity get the best of them. They had to hear the beatdown going on outside, but apparently they want to take a look to see what’s happening, or perhaps they’re just checking on their boy, the bodyguard who is flattened behind us in the alley.

  The door opens. It’s another guard, a tall, slender guy in a dark suit with even darker shades wrapping his eyes. Tony belts the guy in the stomach. The tall, slender guy huffs and puffs but falls to his knees. Beyond, I can see a hallway empty but for a skinny guy with long, shaggy hair; he’s wearing some kind of sequined jump suit like the King. That’s got to be our boy.

  Tony is busy hammering away at the bodyguard still on his knees when I slide past them and head toward our rock star.

  The guy looks like he’s out of it. I think he’s got to be stoned out of his noggin or something. Doesn’t stop me from smacking him upside the head with my bat. A bit of blood splatters from his now broken nose and he screams like bloody murder. I belt him in the stomach to get him to shut up, but this only forces him back against the wall where he keeps screaming, sounding like some chick in a bad horror movie getting chopped up.

  “Shut him up!” Tony shouts out, finished with the guard.

  I plant my bat in the guy’s stomach again. This time he drops to his knees.

  I grab him by his hair and tug back his head so his swirly eyes are looking me right in the face. “The guitar. Pay Jollie for it or next time we’ll be back with more than just bats.”

  I elbow the idiot in the chin, rocking back his head to smack against the wall.

  I turn to Tony. “Enough?”

  “He ain’t got the guitar, so yeah, let’s get the hell out of here,” he says.

  We skedaddle.

  One last kick to the big security guy’s head on our way to the cab, then I’m peeling rubber and we boogy on down the road, laughing all the while.

  That was fun. Just like the old days. We didn’t get the guitar, but we delivered a message. That should be good enough.