He stutters, the fear oozing out of him, “They’re nobody! Just some kids I picked up. I’m paying them in my personal supply.”
“So then why did you get them so suddenly? When I stopped in two weeks ago, business was great, and I didn’t hear no complaints about safety.” Chris’ stop has been on my route for several years now. I know this place like the back of my hand. So as soon as you're adding new men, guards no less, I can smell the bullshit a mile away.
“I – I – I just didn’t want to get stuck in the middle of you two. I – I – heard about that kid. Hunny or Hunter or something. And I got scared. That’s all! I promise!”
“Hunter? What do you know about Hunter?”
The kid’s been missing for a week now. No one’s heard him, not even his mama and he was a good boy before then, always checking in with family no matter the risk in it. And when Jager’s dealing with moms crying over the phone looking for their son, we know we got problems.
But Chris doesn’t answer. He changes the subject, offering to get me my money sooner than our usual pick up time.
I respond by pushing harder into his chest and cutting farther into his skin with the pinprick of the knife’s edge. “You didn’t answer my fucking question! Where the fuck is Hunter?!”
He stammers again, and I watch as sweat drips down his face and onto his shirt. He squirms uncomfortably beneath me.
I try it again, this time more direct, “If you don’t tell me where Hunter is and what you know, I will burn this whole goddamn place down. You know what happened to Quinto’s Place? That huge fire that destroyed everything in that restaurant? I’ll make it happen again. And believe me that tires and oil burn much faster than quesadillas and tacos.”
He lets out a gasp of air before screaming, “Fuck! Ugh! I knew I shouldn’t have gotten mixed up with you bastards.” I stare at him impatiently, not losing my eye contact. I didn’t have time to hear regrets. “I heard…I heard from one of my, uh, guys dealing with the Coyotes that Hunter got caught crossing lines. Shot dead. Body’s in a landfill somewhere.”
I release him, watching him fall and grab his neck. I fish into the front pocket of my jacket and pull out a cigarette and a lighter. I’m not a smoker, never was, but I need one after hearing that. After taking a few drags, I turn back to Chris who is eying his desk, clearly plotting something.
I only have moments before I figure it out. As he makes a dash for it, I run as well, flinging myself over the counter and behind the desk. My hand goes for under the computer station and finds it – the cold hard handle of a pistol. I yank it off of the mount it's on and turn it towards its owner. “Oh Chris, Chris, Chris. You really fucked up this time.”
He gets down on his knees, his hands at his head. “I was only trying to protect myself. You don’t understand, Cal!”
“What don’t I understand? That you’re a little * of a man who I’m about to kill?”
“No! Cal! They’d kill me anyway. The Coyotes been coming around here for months now. They’ve been terrorizing me, forcing me to sell their shit. I didn’t have a choice! I knew it would come to this eventually.”
I look at him, his eyes welling with tears. But a flicker of paper to the side of me catches my attention. It’s a picture of him holding a little girl about Maddie’s age, probably a granddaughter. It’s in a homemade frame broken in small pieces from our struggle. I give him one last glance before I put the gun back to my face, looking straight at him, just as my daddy taught me in target practice.
In my head I count 1… 2… 3…And on the 3, I do it. I turn the gun around, using the handle to smack him in the back of the head.
He falls forward awkwardly before crashing down to his side with the familiar sound of a body thudding up against the cinderblock floors. Blood almost instantly appears near his ear. I kick his body once or twice, looking for life. But he’s motionless, completely out. Using my shirt to cover my prints, I lean down and feel for a pulse. He’s alive by my own mercy.
The old timers, the 1%ers, they’ll brag about me and some of the crazy shit I’ve done, but they know I’m not the type of guy to kill. That’s for the enforcers. I’d rather destroy lives than take them. It’s more fun that way. And in this case Chris got lucky that it was me doing the recon and not Red Dog or even Ace. Blood and an excuse to shoot were their calling cards.