Damaged Goods (2 page)

“Okay then,” Hannibal said. “Let's dance.”

Hannibal was bouncing on his toes now, like a prizefighter. His head never held still. Hard Dog punched the air near Hannibal's head three more times while Hannibal circled him, always somehow just out of reach. Then the light was in Anita's eyes and she realized it would be in Hard Dog's face as well.

Because she had to squint, Anita almost missed what happened next. Hannibal's arms were pumping. Hard Dog's head snapped back several times. Hannibal looked almost bored during this display. Anita glanced around and noticed that he was the center of attention now, and that the crowd noise had hushed to a murmur, leaving only the music pushing the action.

Hannibal paused, as if to see what effect his punches were having.

“Enough?”

Anita wasn't sure Hard Dog even knew where he was by then, but he still tried one more time, with a loping right that Hannibal easily sidestepped.

“Guess not,” Hannibal said. Then, in what seemed a very businesslike manner, he snapped three side kicks up into Hard Dog's midsection. A final thumping right from Hannibal ended it. Hard Dog was unconscious long before his body collapsed onto the tiles.

After one more brief beat of silence the white noise of human conversation resumed, and Anita felt as if she was waking from a trance. Husky men were gathered around Huge engaged in heated conversation. Club bouncers, she presumed. Tonya had dropped into a chair, still staring wistfully at Huge. And Frost, no longer the center of
attention, had also found a nearby chair. His attention was focused on Hannibal.

“This don't end here,” Frost said through clenched teeth.

“You want me,” Hannibal responded, “You bring your chrome grill on over any time. I'm easy to find.” He drew a business card from an inside jacket pocket and flipped it in Frost's general direction. The card fluttered through the air to land on Hard Dog's chest.

Huge wrapped an arm around Hannibal's shoulders. “Hey, you all right, dog,” Huge said in a high but clear voice. “Putting you on the payroll was a smart move for sure.”

“You said you had some trouble coming from that dude,” Hannibal said. “As I told you, trouble is my business. But I think yours is over for now.” Hannibal smiled, but it seemed clear to Anita that he was uncomfortable with Huge's casual contact. His smile was convincing, but forced. This was not his reaction to a friend, she thought, but to a client. He was helping Huge with a problem for pay.

“Brother, anything you ever need, you just call on Huge. You know what I'm saying? And I'll have to send you a stack of our latest CD's,” Huge said, disengaging and moving back into the party.

“Don't sweat it,” Hannibal said. He lowered his voice to add, “I don't listen to that crap.”

Then the two men, the star and the man who defended him, wandered off in opposite directions. The music continued, and the open space on the dance floor completely closed except that people carefully avoided tripping over the muscular form spread-eagled on the gleaming tiles.

Anita still felt disconnected, out of phase with her surroundings. As she drifted slowly through the crowd toward Hard Dog she was remembering Tonya's words.

“Do you believe in fate?”

She was jostled hard just as she reached her destination and almost fell over him. There Hard Dog lay, like a man who had simply fallen asleep in the midst of the chaos. His deep chest rose and fell and her eyes followed the small card floating up and down with it. Simple block lettering on it
said, “Hannibal Jones” and under that, “Troubleshooter.” There was an address and a phone number, and nothing else. If Frost had taken the business card she would have known she was wrong. The fact that he chose to leave it behind told her that perhaps fate had put her in this place at this time for a reason.

Ignored by those around her, she knelt to pick up the card.

Hannibal hated the numbers. Investigative work was merely drudgery. The physical stuff, the fighting that came with bodyguard duty, that was kind of exciting. Helping people find answers to difficult problems, that part of his job was almost fun. But bookkeeping, record keeping, bill paying and the dreaded taxes made him cringe. Still, it had to be done and this was the morning for him to do it.

The computer in his office told Hannibal that he had finally reached the place he wanted to be. He pushed a button, and electronically transferred a chunk of his most recent fee into his short-term savings account. He was liking the number in that account. It was just a handful of dollars from his target.

Across the room, at the visitor's small table, Sarge sipped his coffee and asked, “So this Huge Wilson fellow, he treat you right?”

“Yeah. As a matter of fact he kicked in a nice bonus. He knew that other producer, Frost, was looking for a confrontation. He's also smart enough to know that that sort of thing is bad for business.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that,” Sarge said. “These boys all think they're gangsters. I know that guy travels with his own posse most of the time. They couldn't handle this Frost?”

Hannibal took a big swallow of his own coffee, setting his cup in a shaft of morning sunlight beaming in his front windows. “Sure, if he wanted a mini-gang war on his hands. By ditching them, he tempted Frost into making a move. He knew I could handle the physical stuff, and sort of distance it from him and his crew. But man, I was following that guy for weeks, and he does party hearty.”

Sarge was a stocky black man whose hair had receded halfway back on his head, but whose easygoing manner belied his age. He was also a cornerstone of Hannibal's life. Aside from being Hannibal's upstairs neighbor in the building that housed his apartment and his office, Sarge was also the man Hannibal regarded as his best friend. That put him in the position to ask questions no one else could get away with.

“So, at six hundred dollars a day that was a pretty nice payoff. You got enough yet to pop the question?”

Hannibal pushed back from the desk, glaring at Sarge, but grinning as well. “Like it's any of your business, but, yeah, I'm pretty close to where I want to be.”

“Like it matters to her,” Sarge shook his head, dismissing the idea.

“Maybe not,” Hannibal said, “but it matters to me. A brother better have good and plenty of his own before he proposes to a successful lawyer, man. I don't want anybody to think she's going to be supporting me. But yeah, I think I'm about ready to slip this on her hand.”

From his desk drawer Hannibal pulled a small gray jewelry box. He flipped it open to reveal a full carat of his future dreams. In shopping for this one piece, Hannibal had learned more about jewelry than he had ever wanted to know. He smiled softly at the clear, colorless ideal-cut diamond, sparkling brightly in its six-prong platinum setting. His mind only touched momentarily on the cost, focused more on what this tiny token represented to him, all the good and potential risk of a lifelong commitment.

“Well, it's about time, I say.”

“Yeah? I notice there's no ring on your finger, chump,” Hannibal said.

“True that,” Sarge said, nodding and staring out the window. “Brother, you just don't know how lucky you are to have a lady like that.”

The silence that followed was a bit awkward, but it didn't last long before another of Hannibal's upstairs neighbors pushed through the door. Reynaldo Santiago was short and bulky, and his hair was gathered on the sides and back of his head. After his wife passed away he didn't bring much from his native Cuba except his daughter, his slight accent, and his love for cigars, one of which was already clenched between his teeth.

“Just thought I'd check in before work, fellows. So, what's going on?”

“Just trying to plan out a rosy romantic future for young blood here,” Sarge said. “He's still dragging his feet, though.”

Ray planted his palms on Hannibal's desk, leaning in close. “What is your problem, Paco? When you going to make an honest woman out of my little girl? She's not going to be there forever, you know. She sees those three-piece-suiters every day at the office, and I sure as hell don't want to end up with one of them for a son-in-law.”

Hannibal chuckled and leaned back to avoid the smoke. “Hey, no fair ganging up on me, you two. And Ray, you know you've got to do things just the right way when you're dealing with your daughter. A fellow steps to that woman, you know he got to come correct. As a matter of fact, I was just then trying to think up the right romantic setting to propose to Cindy when you walked in. What do you think about…”?

A tap at the door stopped Hannibal mid-sentence. Then the door swung open and a young black man walked confidently into the room to stop in front of Hannibal's desk. He stood right beside Ray, but seemed not to notice him or Sarge at all.

“You, I presume are Mr. Hannibal Jones?”

The newcomer's precise pronunciation was not the only reason he arrested Hannibal's attention. His hair was cut
military-short. He was medium height and build, but his ramrod posture made him look taller. His bearing seemed at odds with his black pants and vest, and the white shirt with French cuffs.

“I am,” Hannibal said after a moment. “How can I help you, Mister…?”

“Call me Henry, sir,” the newcomer said. “I'm here for Mr. Benjamin Blair. He would like for you to come out to his home this morning to discuss an assignment. He believes you can be of help to him regarding a situation with which he is dealing.”

“This morning?” Hannibal asked. “Must be important. Are you Blair's personal assistant?”

“I am his butler, sir.”

Sarge barely stifled a chuckle. “Butler. Now there's an occupation you don't hear much about these days.”

“Really?” Ray said with a small smile. “I'm a chauffeur, but I don't know any butlers myself. You lay out his clothes and stuff?”

“That would be a valet,” Henry replied without humor. His eyes never wavered from Hannibal. “I am in charge of Mr. Blair's household. Mr. Blair is prepared to pay your normal daily fee for a consultation with you this morning. Will ten o'clock be convenient for you?”

Hannibal couldn't tell if Ray was more amused by this arrogant dude or insulted by his attitude. He turned to Hannibal and said, “I got a limousine service to run, Paco. I'll leave you with Jeeves here.”

As Ray headed for the door, Hannibal shuffled things on his desk. He knew his schedule was blank for the next week, but he opened his daybook and flipped the page before responding. “Actually, I'd just as soon get out there and meet him right now. Give me the address.”

“No need, sir. If we are to leave now, you can simply follow me.”

Sarge leaned back in his chair, still fighting an inner laugh. “Another job for the world famous troubleshooter? I thought you were taking a few days off.”

“That was the plan,” Hannibal said, standing and pulling on his suit coat. “But when a guy like Benjamin Blair has trouble, it's usually serious.”

“Ben Blair? Should I know that name?”

“Probably not,” Hannibal said. “He's one of the guys who started an Internet company during the boom, but made it stick. Tactical Datamation I think is the name of the outfit.”

“If I may sir,” Henry said, acknowledging Sarge for the first time. “Unless the stock market has shifted radically in the last twenty-four hours, Mr. Blair is one of the three wealthiest men in the Washington D.C. area.”

When Hannibal stepped out the front door of the row house he called home in Southeast Washington D.C. he was dressed for business. For him that meant a black suit and tie, thin black gloves and Oakley wraparound sunglasses. His woman called him a throwback, an anachronism, and on less charitable days, desperately out of style. But his style was his own and he saw no reason to change.

He glanced back over his shoulder at the brick building that held his apartment and his office. When he first saw this place it was a crack house occupied by winos, drug addicts and prostitutes. He enlisted the aid of a small band of homeless men to clean it out and, in the process, found a place in a neighborhood that turned out to be a home worth fighting for. Four of those previously homeless men moved into the other apartments, including Ray Santiago and his good friend Sarge.

Henry climbed into a small Honda and Hannibal prepared to follow. His white Volvo 850 GLT glinted in the sunlight. He had her detailed the day before and was quite pleased with the result. Once belted into her white leather seat he fired the engine up and sat for just a second to listen to her growl and then purr as the engine settled into a smooth idle. Lately he'd been thinking about trading her in, but The White Tornado was perhaps his second best friend. He never called her that
in front of anybody, of course. The name just came to him one day when he was pushing down I-95 at close to one hundred miles an hour, blowing every other vehicle on the road out of his way. He loved the car, and it was hard for him to consider letting her adopt another driver.