A Mighty Fortress (8 page)

“You son of a bitch,” he moaned from the floor.

 
Kiki drove the gun into my side and pushed me to the ground. Jimmy kicked me from the front. I felt all his frustration and anger from the night explode on my face. “Well done,” I had to tell him.

Kiki drove the gun barrel into my temple now. The garage floor was cold and surprisingly comfortable.

Scalzo returned, catching his breath. He stood over me, pulled my neck back like a crane. “Answer me, scumbag. Who the hell hired you?”

“Mattie Wilcox. The attorney for your old employer.”

“Pilka?”

“I guess that’s his name. Hell, I don’t know.”

Scalzo grunted. It turned into a laugh. “Give me a break. Give me a fucking break. My attorney’s going to be in the courthouse first thing tomorrow morning to take care of that subpoena. What do you think about
that
?”

“I could care less, friend. I just get paid to serve ’em.”

“Don’t call me friend, you piece of shit.” He tried kicking me with all his body weight, but the angle wasn’t right and it felt more like a leg push.
 

I might have chuckled. Whatever I did, it compelled Scalzo to lob a few blows. I turned with each one to minimize their impact, but my head still stung.
 

Scalzo took a break with his hands on his knees. Catching his breath, he asked, “So what does this Wilcox want with me?”

I got to my feet. “Why don’t you ask him? I think you overestimate my role in this.”

“You’re saying he just hired you to serve me without saying nothing?”

I nodded. “Yes, Sherlock. That’s exactly what happened.”

“What else did he say?”

“Just that he needed you served ASAP.”

“Why?” His tone predicted progress. “Why!”

I thought I’d throw him a bone. “He knew you were going out of town and wanted you served before you left.”

Scalzo glared at Kiki, as though to make sure he’d heard that, too. Kiki nodded.

Then Scalzo returned his glare on me. “Listen to me, you sorry-ass fuck. I’m going to ask you this question once and only once, and you’re going to answer me. Are we clear?”

“You better ask the question first, eh?”

I guess that was out of line, because he responded with an uppercut to the gut. Fortunately, I’d seen it coming and had time to brace. Judging by the way he winced and squeezed his fist, I think the blow hurt Scalzo more than me.

“I said are we clear?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. “Now what’s the question?”

“Don Alexi?” He was panting now.

“That’s a question?”

This uppercut was quicker, so I had less time to brace. My stomach was getting sore, and my lower back was feeling really tight, like it could go at any moment. I made a note never to accept a dangerous job the day after a powerlifting meet.

“Do you know him?” he hissed.

“Who?” I’d honestly forgotten the name already.

“Don Alexi!”

“Never heard of him.”

I braced. He’d already wound up, but he stopped short of hitting me. Instead, he was searching my eyes for the truth. I had nothing to hide, so I gave him the most honest look I could muster.

“You don’t know Don Alexi?”

“On my mother’s grave, I never heard his name before just now.”

Scalzo retreated and rejoined Kiki. They whispered for a long minute and then seemed to be nodding in agreement.
 

I raised my hand. “So, you guys done with me?” It didn’t hurt to ask.

Kiki shrugged, as though to ask what Scalzo wanted done. They moved in my direction, but Scalzo stopped them again, and they huddled a few feet away. I could hear some of their murmuring this time. Kiki mumbled something about picking me up at Mons and having no real problems en route. One of them opined something about me telling the truth. I was pretty sure Scalzo told them to have some fun but to cause no lasting damage.
 

Scalzo returned to me. “I want to tell you something. If I ever see your face again, I don’t care if it’s in court, the grocery store, or at Mass—I see you again and I’m going to rip your fucking throat out. We straight on that?”

I looked at him blankly.

“You got that?”

I coughed but said nothing.
 

“You better say something, you scraggly-assed punk.”

I shrugged and said, “We’ll see.”

“You got some kind of death wish, friend?” Scalzo studied my eyes.

I thought of Dr. J and how she might answer that question. Then, without warning or contemplation, I spit blood. I really didn’t mean to, or so I thought, and it traveled farther than I intended, if I even intended it at all.
 

But judging by his reaction, the bloody goober must have hit Scalzo. I didn’t necessarily mean for that to happen, either, though I didn’t exactly regret it when Scalzo’s face twisted with anger. He wiped his face and turned to Kiki. “I’ll tell you what. Let’s go with Plan B.”

“Plan B?” Kiki said. “You sure about that?”

“You heard him,” I said. “Plan B.”

Scalzo got a good jab on my nape. I went to the ground to make him feel good.
 

“Good knowing you, pal,” Scalzo said on his way out. He told Kiki to clean up and call him when it was done.

Kiki took a few steps away from me, his gun pointed at me. He conferred with Jimmy. As far as I could tell, he was telling Jimmy to calm the hell down. Jimmy didn’t like the plan. He made a point about how obvious it was—the same night I served their boss, I’d disappear, and there were probably cameras in the parking lot at the Mons.

“The decision’s over your pay grade,” Kiki told him.

Just then, I heard the whiny rev of the Porsche. Scalzo shed some rubber on his way out, like a good little prick.

I looked up. The garage was poorly lit—still only the one dangling light bulb, but there were trusses overhead, open rafters, that looked to be about ten feet off the ground.
 

Kiki was finalizing his plan, calming down the kid; meanwhile, I was finalizing mine. It didn’t take long.

A moment later, Kiki returned to me, gun in tow. “Up,” he said.

“We doing this here?” I started getting to my feet. He wasn’t aiming yet, and he’d need to take his time in this lighting. Little did he know, the lighting was about to get worse.
 

As I pivoted to my feet, I gave Kiki an uppercut to the groin and smacked the hand holding the gun. It slid from his grip like a buttered ear of corn.

I took my time with Jimmy, spinning him around before I gave him a quick little choke, making sure to give the old windpipe some extra attention with my nubby thumbs. Not nearly enough to knock him out. I was just going for a good, solid disorientation.
 

Kiki moved slowly, but he was struggling to get up while scrambling for the gun.

I leapt for the dangling light and swung it up as hard as I could. It shattered against the truss overhead, an effervescent explosion that flashed like a prism and then faded to black. By then, I was swinging from the same rafter, peering through the dark.
 

I dropped from the beam and caught Jimmy. His gun fired, but not before I was behind him, steering him like a puppet. “Shoot, shoot, shoot,” I screamed, plowing him toward the spot I had seen Kiki last. Then I shed Jimmy and veered to the far right. More shots were fired.

“I think I got him!” Kiki said. He grunted, gasping for his breath. “Jimmy?”

Jimmy was screaming, and by the sound of it had regressed to a prepubescent pitch.
 

I had to be quick now. Kiki lit a match. Just as he glanced down at his partner moaning and writhing in pain, I knocked Kiki back with a left-right combo. Then I grabbed his neck.
 

This choke would knock him out. It took less than five seconds, but who was counting? You can feel the loss of consciousness once it occurs. You can also fake it if you’re on the other end of the choke and know what you’re doing. I didn’t have to worry about Kiki faking it. He was out. Cold.
 

I held his body and eased him onto the ground. It was the least I could do. Once he was prostrate, I found the main light switch and turned it on with my shoe. Fluorescent lights warmed up and revealed my handiwork. Jimmy’s thigh was bleeding, apparently from the last shot Kiki had fired, and I was pretty sure the kid was shedding some tears too. I was relieved that he hadn’t taken one in the gut. He’d live, but he’d be slow for a while. Maybe the time off would do him good, allow him to reconsider his calling in life.

I figured Kiki would be fine, too. He’d come to in a matter of minutes. He’d probably be a little disoriented, and he could expect a throbbing in his head and neck for a few days. But overall, it was nothing a good breakfast and massage tomorrow wouldn’t take care of.

I opened the door with my shirt wrapped around my hand, to keep my prints off the doorknob. Once outside, I made a run for the Volvo.

On the way out, I was blinded by the lights of a van. I was relieved not to see the lights of sirens—it was just Hector rolling his window down.

“What took you so long?” I said.

“I got here as fast as I could.”

“Let’s go.” I looked in every direction and made sure we were alone. “And don’t tell anyone you saw me here.”

Hector grimaced like a dad who’d just caught his son taking the family wagon out for a spin. “Let me guess—you took the Scalzo job.”

I shrugged. “Too much to explain right now.”

“You can explain it while we work.”

“Work?”

“Yeah, we’re supposed to bottle tonight.”

“That will have to wait, but I’ll treat you to a beer for checking in on me.”
 

I told him we needed to make a pit stop, and then I slowed down where Jimmy had thrown out my phone.
 
I finally found it and picked it up. The screen was shattered, as were the phone’s guts.

Better the phone’s guts than mine.

When my alarm sounded at seven o’clock Monday morning, I awoke to pain in most of my extremities and the innermost caverns of my brain. I killed the alarm. I should have slept in. The night before, Hector and I had agreed to postpone our bottling party due to my run-in with Mr. Chad Scalzo, but we still stayed up past midnight drinking from my existing stash while I told him about the Scalzo job and its aftermath. Hector said he regretted not tagging along, but I was pretty sure he was relieved he’d stayed home. Crawling out of bed that morning, I sure wished I had.

Swollen eyes and modestly bruised cheeks greeted me in the bathroom mirror. My regular appointment with Dr. J was in less than an hour. If there was ever a time I deserved to miss an appointment, I figured it was today. Hell, maybe she’d even waive the late-cancellation fee. But I’d never missed an appointment with the good doctor, and wasn’t about to start on account of Chad Scalzo and his incompetent goons.

Truth be told, Dr. Ellen Jasinski was one of the reasons I’d decided to stay in Florida after testing its warm waters a few years earlier. A nationally renowned expert in treating guys like me, she kept an office at the VA Hospital and taught at the University of South Florida. I’d been seeing her long enough that I had dibs on the first appointment of the week, Mondays at 8:30 A.M. I liked getting the appointment out of the way early and setting the tone for the rest of the week.

A minor fender bender had jammed northbound traffic on I-275, so I ended up being about five minutes late. For some reason, I still had to sit in the waiting room another five minutes before she poked her head out the door, smiled, and said my name.
 

Her eyes widened at the sight of my face, but she didn’t inquire until we were behind closed doors. And when she did so, it was in her usual blunt way: “Good morning, Milo. Tell me about your face.” She slipped her shoes off and curled her legs under her tiny rump as she settled into the plastic Art Deco chair she always sat in.

I got comfortable on my dais facing her. “I had a job last night that got complicated.”

She nodded. “Complicated?”

I nodded back.

“How many men did it take to do this to you?”

“Good question, Doc. Only three this time, and only two of them were armed. My skills are slipping.”

She looked down at the notes in her lap. I was pretty sure she did that from time to time just so she could articulate what to say next.
 

“Don’t you want to know how it made me feel?” I asked.

She tilted her head to aim her glasses at me. “I was hoping to lead up to that, Milo. I guess I need more coffee.”

“I could go for some, too.”

She nodded at the carafe and told me to help myself. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you tell me the answer to that question you just posed.”

I grabbed us each a Styrofoam cup and filled them with java. The pot was hot to the touch. I opened the small refrigerator under her cabinet. There was half-and-half for me and sweetened vanilla almond milk for her. “I’ll be straight with you,” I said, while stirring our drinks. “I liked it. I felt calm. Calmer than I’ve felt in a while, especially last night when I was hanging out with my neighbor and talking about everything that went down. It was like I’d just had a really good massage or something.”

I handed her coffee over and returned to my dais. She sipped hers and gestured for me to continue.

“So, I guess you’re right, Doc.”

“Right about what?”

“I know what you’re going to say. It’s just like you said before, I’m addicted to danger and adrenaline. I was calm because I finally had my fix.”

She took another sip and cleared her throat. In all honesty, she looked like she’d had her own bruiser the night before. He hair was usually tied up in a clean ponytail, her makeup done in the most understated way, and her simple clothes usually pressed to perfection. All of that was missing today. It made me wonder if we’d had a full moon the night before.
 

“Milo, I’d never want my diagnosis or any of my comments about your recovery to form some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy for you, if that’s even the right phrase. I take no pleasure in the fact that you think your experience lends credence to what we’ve talked about.”