by David DeLee
Tara frowned at her beer. “I thought you told Singleton you weren’t getting involved?”
“He’s busy searching the apartments. We’ll just ask around a little. Anything information we get, we’ll turn over to him. We’re saving him some time is all.” Bannon drank and grimaced as he swallowed down the warm beer. “He’ll appreciate the help. Be grateful.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.”
One of the burly pool players held up their nearly empty beer pitcher. “Another pitcher. And make it snappy, Ada.”
“Shove that pool cue you know where, Bennie.” She continued to dry glasses with a filthy, damp rag and made no move to serve the two men.
Bannon dropped a fifty on the bar.
Ada looked at it like it might actually bite her. “You already paid. Want another?”
“No. That’s for you,” Bannon said.
“Hell of a tip, mister. You two leaving?”
“No. We’re looking for Billy Palmer. Know where I can find him?”
She stared at him, hard. “This look like an information counter to you?”
Bannon remained undeterred. “A friend told me he hangs out here.”
Tara grabbed her bottle and spun around in her seat. She planted her elbows on the bar behind her and leaned back, looking the bar over. She tapped Bannon’s arm. “Um, Brice.”
Ada dropped the damp rag on the bar. “What friend might that be?”
Tara sat up straight. She tapped his arm again, more urgently this time. “Brice.”
He turned.
Two men stood facing them. Had them trapped if Bannon were being perfectly honest.
The pool players. They were both twenty something, wearing blue jeans and T-shirts and spring-weight jackets. Both had unruly, dark hair that maybe saw a comb once a day, but Bannon felt he was being generous. One was clean-shaven. The other’s jaw was covered with two day old stubble. An overwhelming two-prong assault of body odor and too much body spray to cover it up hit Bannon’s nose like an Agent Orange attack.
A third man approached. Bannon had noticed him earlier, sitting at one of the booths, a cell phone pressed to his ear. He was older than the pool players, more Bannon’s age, and better dressed. He took a step closer. The other two men moved back to give him room.
This was the man in charge.
The hard-looking bartender came out from behind the bar. She snapped her gum and smacked a Louisville slugger—a baseball bat—against the palm of her hand.
“These two been asking about Billy, Dom.” She punctuated the sentence with a slap of the bat against her palm.
Bannon eyed the bat. “That’s not at all necessary. We’re not looking for any trouble.”
“Except you found yourself some,” the scruffy faced thug said, smiling at his own cleverness. “Ain’t that right, Bennie?”
Tara rolled her eyes.
Bennie shook his head. “Shut up, Rico.”
“What’s your business with Billy?” the one named Dom asked.
It was clear Bennie and Rico were itching for a fight, but they were irrelevant. The hired help. Bannon focused his attention on Dom. He was the man in charge, and looked like a tough piece of work himself. Longshoreman-type, Dom was thick with muscles that hadn’t yet turned to flab. In a fight, the man would be a handful. Bannon was sure of that as he debated how to play it next.
But Tara didn’t give him a chance. She slipped off her stool and confronted Dom, got into his face.
“What’s it to you?” She looked him up and down with an expression of contempt. “Don?”
“That’s Dom. For Dominick.” He looked past her at Bannon, dismissing her. “You wanna walk out of here in one piece, mister. I suggest you put a muzzle on this little girl of yours.”
Bannon winced and shook his head. “Oh, you shouldn’t have said that.”
“Yeah,” Dom said. “Why’s that?”
Tara rushed at the man, shouting, “I’ll show you a muzzle!”
Dom jumped back quickly, reminding Bannon of a little kid he saw once at the zoo. The boy had his face pressed against an exhibit window. He’d relentlessly teased the gorillas on the other side until one of them unexpectedly rushed at the glass. It slammed its great bulk into it and pounded on the glass with two black fists so hard the whole building seemed to shake. The kid backpedaled, screaming, and darted behind his mother’s legs, crying.
Dominick didn’t have his mother to hide behind, only his muscle; bearded Rico and clean-shaven Bennie. They rushed at Tara from either side.
Bannon picked up his beer and sipped. Would it kill ’em to keep it cold?
Tara punched Rico in the throat. He grabbed his neck and staggered back.
She snapped a sidekick at Bennie, sending him backpedaling across the bar with a grunt.
Enrico, red faced, came back for more. He ran at Tara, growling like an attacking animal. He swung a fist, she blocked it. He swung another fist, she ducked under it. Then, using his own momentum against him, she rolled him over her back and flipped him away. He landed on the floor, on his back, with a thump.
Tara stomped a booted foot into his gut. He woofed, coughing up a lungful of air and clutched at his stomach. She left him gasping, curled up, and rocking on the floor, fighting the urge to throw up.
She spun around as Bennie came at her again. She drove him back with seven rapid punches to his face, like two pistons, one after the other, until his nose broke and spurted blood.
“Enough of this,” Ada vowed and weighed into the fight.
She ran at Tara, raising her bat to swing.
Bannon called out, “Blades!”
She was ready. “I see.”
She ducked under Ada’s swing. As Tara straightened up, she drew her haladie, a double-bladed knife that had a bone-carved center grip between its two curved blades. The weapon was a favorite of the Raput, an ancient warrior class known as the samurai of India. It was her favorite, too. She sliced the blade across the back of Ada’s forearm. Blood leaked from the shallow wound.
Bannon breathed a sigh of relief. She could’ve cut the woman’s arm off with the haladie if she’d wanted to.
The bartender gasped. She swung the bat in the opposite direction but with her wounded arm it didn’t have any of her previous effort’s power. Tara easily avoided it and came up face to face with Ada. She pressed one side of the haladie blade to Ada’s throat, forcing her back into wooden support beam.
“Drop it.” Tara nicked the woman’s neck with the tip of the blade, drawing a single drop of blood. Incentive. “I said drop it.”
The bat slipped from Ada’s hand. It hit the floor with a hollow wooden sound.
By then the other patrons had scrambled for the exit leaving just the six of them. The bar was quiet as a tomb, except for Bennie’s moaning about his broken nose and Elton John singing about how Saturday’s all right for fighting.
Bannon slugged down the last of his beer, grimaced at the warm taste, and put the bottle on the bar. He stood up. Tara kept the haladie on Ada’s throat. The bartender breathed heavily as she drilled angry holes into Tara with her eyes.
Bannon walked slowly until he was nose to nose with Dom.
Bennie and Rico watched the confrontation but made no move to intervene.
Dom glared down at them on the floor, then over at Ada. Finally, he met Bannon’s stare.
Bannon nodded for Tara to back away from Ada.
As the bartender stumbled away, grasping at her throat with one hand and cradling her cut arm with the other, Tara couldn’t resist giving the woman a kick in the caboose. The bartender spun and down in a nearby booth. Sitting sideways, she moved her hand from her wounded throat. She stared at the trickle of blood on her fingertips and looked pale, like she might be sick.
“That’s why I call her Blades,” Bannon said. “Now, let’s try this again. Tell me about Billy Palmer.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Bannon and Tara returned to their stools at the bar.
> Rico and Bennie picked themselves up off the floor. Rico held two arms around his gut and still looked on the verge of throwing up. Bennie covered his nose with his hands. Blood dripped down his T-shirt. He spoke under his cupped hands, his voice muffled. “I think my noth is broken.”
Dom gave the two of them disappointed looks. “Go in the back and get yourselves cleaned up. You’re pathetic, both of you.” As they slowly moved through the bar, hunched over, he said, “Get something to eat and stay out of trouble tonight. I need you two to be ready to go tomorrow.”
Rico looked stunned. “We’re still on?”
“Why wouldn’t we be? Cause you got your asses handed to you by a girl…” Dom jumped a step back, putting distance between him and Tara. “We’re on if I say we’re on. Now go.”
Ada went back behind the bar and wrapped the bar rag around her forearm. The wound wasn’t deep enough to even leave a scar, Bannon mused, but the infection she risked from that filthy rag caused him to shiver.
Dom approached them but kept a good distance from Tara. He wiped the side of his mouth with his thumb. “Okay, you’ve got my attention. What’s your interest in Billy?”
“We’re trying to find him,” Bannon said.
“Ain’t seen ’im in a couple of days. What’s your interest?”
“You know Alex Riggi?” Bannon asked
Dom got cagey again. “Yeah. I know him. What about him?”
“He’s dead.” Bannon watched for a reaction. “Washed up on a beach this morning in New Hampshire.”
Dom shrugged. “That ain’t news. What’s it to you?”
Bannon spun around and glanced at Ada. “Can we get a couple more beers?”
“And would it kill you to make them cold?” Tara asked.
Ada looked past them to Dom, who nodded. She went into the back and came out with two frosty cold bottles of Sam Adams, ice cold to the touch.
“What is it you two are after?” Dom asked, getting the conversation back on track.
Bannon took a long drink of his beer. After he swallowed, he said, “That’s more like it. Alex and I. We served together. I was his CO.”
“Oh, yeah. Where was that?” Dom asked.
“The Sandbox. Afghanistan.”
“For real?”
Bannon couldn’t tell if the guy was buying his story or not. “Yeah. For real.”
“What outfit?”
Terrific, a test. “1st Cav. Out of Fort Hood. That’s in Texas.”
“I know where Fort Hood is.” He gave Bannon a long up and down look. “So you served with Alex. Bully for you. Now he’s dead. Still don’t explain what you’re doing here.”
“I want to know who killed him.”
“Who said anything about killing? I heard it was a boating accident.”
“The bullet in his forehead says otherwise. Guess the news didn’t report that, did they?”
“No. How do you know about it?”
“I was there,” Bannon lied.
“You kill him?”
It was Bannon’s turn to give Dom a long, hard look. “Now why would I be here looking for who killed him, if I did it?”
“You just happened to be where Alex got killed but you didn’t do it.”
“I happened to be there ’cause Alex and I had business to conduct. When I got there, Alex was already dead.”
“What kind of business?”
“That’s between Alex and me.”
“Alex is dead.”
“And I’m out a lot of money.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Tara asked, “Why not?”
“’cause Alex worked for me and I don’t let ’im have any side hustles.”
Bannon shrugged. “Guess he was stepping out on your then, Dom. Maybe you killed him.”
Dominick ignored the accusation, simmering at the thought Alex might’ve been doing his own thing. “Why you asking about Palmer then?”
“The two of them were thick as thieves, pardon the expression. Billy was supposed to be with Alex last night.” Bannon was fishing and had to be careful not to shovel it too deep. “I figure he might know what happened to Alex. We came here looking ’cause Alex talked about this place a lot.”
“God knows why,” Tara said.
“Well,” Dom said. “Billy ain’t here and Alex is dead. Guess you wasted your time.”
“Except Alex owed me a lot of money,” Bannon said. “He was supposed to have my money last night. No one at the scene talked about finding any money, so it stands to reason his killer took that, too. I want my money.”
It’s always about love or money, Bannon thought as he made up the story on the fly.
“You here to shake me down?” Dom asked. “Try and get the money Billy owed you from me?”
“Nope.”
“You some kind of cop?” Dom asked, growing suspicious.
Bannon laughed. “I look like a cop?”
“Kind of,” Dom said. “Yeah.”
Bannon looked at Tara. “She strike you as a cop?”
Dom had to admit. “Hell, no. Where’d you learn to handle a knife like that?”
“Indian Navy. The MARCOS program,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“It’s like our Special Forces,” Bannon said.
“Get outta here.”
Bannon and Tara shrugged.
“For real?”
Tara sighed. “For real.”
“How’d you two hook up?” He raised his hands. “Figure of speech. Meet. Get together. You know.”
Bannon said, “Tara was part of a mercenary group—”
“Private military contractor,” Tara added noting Dom’s lost expression.
“Right. They were attached to our unit as additional escort security. We got to know each other.” Which was all true, as far as it went. “We’ll leave it at that.”
“Fair enough,” Dom said.
Tara finished her beer.
“Let’s get back to Alex,” Bannon said.
“Yeah. Alex. Sure. Can’t help you with who whacked him. Everybody here loved Alex. Ain’t that right, Ada?”
Ada snapped her gum and rubbed a new, but equally-gamey bar rag over the bar, clearly bored with the direction the conversation had taken. “Yeah. Sure, Dom.”
“You said he worked for you, doing what?”
“Odd jobs. Things here and there. This and that. As for Billy, I can’t help you there, either. Ain’t seen Billy in a couple of days. That right, Ada?”
Ada had her cell phone out, tapping at the screen. Without looking up, she said, “Sounds about right.”
“What’s your name, friend?” Dom asked.
“Bannon.”
“What about you?” Dom asked Tara. “You got a name?”
“Blades.”
Dom smiled nervously. “Cute. Ada, give ’em another round.”
“You got a name besides Dom?” Bannon asked.
Dom stuck out his hand. “Dominick Bonucci.”
Bannon shook his hand. It was warm and strong. His skin rough. Someone used to working with his hands. “What do you do for a living now you ain’t in the service, Bannon?”
“This and that.”
Dom smiled. “Fair enough.”
Ada passed around more cold bottles of Sam Adams. This time Dom joined them.
He drank his beer and thought for a moment. “Look. I can’t help you with what happened to Alex or whatever money he owed you. I liked the kid, I really did. Whoever offed him I’d like to get my hands on him and strangle him myself.”
Dom didn’t appear particularly broken up over Alex’s death, despite his words. “Tell you the truth though, Alex getting himself killed puts me in a bit of a bind.”
“How so?” Bannon asked.
“He was supposed to do a job for me.”
“What kind of job?”
Dom hesitated then shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. We’ll get someone else.”
Bannon exch
anged a glance with Tara. “Look. You’ve got a job opening and we’re in a bit of a financial jam. From the kind of cash Alex flashed around I assume whatever it is he did for you pays well. I can suspend my search for my money for a day.”
“A day?” Dom asked.
“I’m guessing whatever you got going down with those two knuckleheads tomorrow is the job you’re short-handed for. What kind of job, is it?”
“Driving.”
“Driving what to where?”
It’s not a what to where kind of job.”
Bannon got it, nodding. “You need a getaway driver.” He grinned. “We’re in.”
CHAPTER NINE
That night back at the Keel Haul, the bar was in full swing, which meant there were seven people in the place, not counting Bannon, Tara, McMurphy, and their most loyal barfly, a rascally old timer named Captain Floyd.
A big crowd for October.
Tara rolled her eyes at that. Whatever.
Two couples sat in a booth under the front windows, working on their third pitcher of beer. Bannon recognized them as local kids. One of the girls worked the counter at the pizza shop on the corner. She always gave him his slices for half-price. She smiled at him now.
Three middle-aged men were at the far end of the bar closest to the kitchen, quietly watching the Red Sox and the Houston Astros battle it out for the American League championship. The Astros were up in the series by a game, but things weren’t looking good for them at the moment in this game.
On the jukebox Miranda Lambert sang about gunpowder and lead.
Tara and Bannon were behind the bar while McMurphy sat in the corner near the register stand. His seat. He had a mug of beer in front of him. Bannon took sips from a glass of club soda and Tara nursed a bourbon on the rocks. Both of them had had more beer than was advisable at the Exeter Lounge earlier and they were both feeling it.
She kept Captain Floyd and the baseball watchers in drinks and trail mix.
Bannon held a phone to his ear and listened. The others watched him expectantly. Bannon nodded once. “Got it. Great. See you there.”
