About an hour later they arrived at The Garden.
“Well, Harold, I promised you we would have a busy day, and I can assure you it’s far from over. I guess you already overheard me talking to Tats, but in case you missed anything I’ll be having a rather dangerous night. I’m gonna need you to watch my back closer than ever tonight, Harold. I’ve got a bad feeling. A really bad feeling. But it’s got to be done. Don’t be shy about coming down from the sky and giving a little back up if things get hot.
“Nighttime will actually make you more of a benefit than ever because if you have to strike, no one will even know what hit them. That being said, try to be discreet if possible. The longer I can keep you a secret weapon, the deadlier you’ll be, and the safer we’ll both be.”
Righty saw a gleam in Harold’s eyes unlike ever before. He looked like a kid who had just been told he would be getting the ten birthday presents of his choice, no exceptions.
“Well, it’s been a while since I’ve tended to my store. I guess I better go see to it. After that, I’m gonna take a long nap and get ready for tonight. I’ll meet you here at 8 p.m.”
From about 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Righty slept with the dead. But though he slept soundly, it was not a pleasant sleep. A deep fear pervaded even his sleep, and when he awoke he felt as nervous as a teenager about to go on his first date. Things had been getting a little icy with Janie, and she offered no line of interrogation when he briefly told her that he was going to go crunch some numbers at the store.
He knew he was going to have some serious making up to do with her soon if he wanted to prevent things going from bad to worse, but as of right now he had far more pressing matters on his mind.
By 8:10 p.m. he was at The Garden, where Harold was patiently waiting. Harold’s sense of smell afforded him a panoramic insight into the emotions and thoughts of a man, perhaps surpassing that man’s understanding of himself. He sensed Righty’s unease before he was even fully in view, although Harold’s eyes offered him a crisp view of the dark milieu that would make a cat seem night-blind.
Harold was never big on words—much less platitudinous ones—so he offered no encouragement. Secretly, however, he was excited by Righty’s apprehensiveness, for it likely meant an increased likelihood Harold would be more than a mere spectator tonight. Almost as if Righty were reading Harold’s mind, he discussed rules of engagement with him, and while there was no considerable change here, it seemed to Harold that Righty was emphasizing those scenarios in which he could intervene with the severest of force, rather than those situations in which he was to remain invisible in the sky above.
Harold found this choice of emphasis to be an indirect authorization to attack liberally.
He noticed Righty’s apprehensiveness decline significantly as they neared the destination outside the junkyard, though Harold sensed it was the result of a considerable conscious effort on Righty’s part, rather than any recalculation he had done on the likelihood of encountering danger that evening. Harold was able to drop Righty off far closer to the junkyard than normal, due to the generous privacy provided by the blackness of night.
It was about 8:45 p.m. when Righty strode into the junkyard meeting location. At first a couple of the toughs jumped up from their seats nervously, as if expecting trouble, but Righty quickly calmed them by identifying himself. There were about thirty of them, and they were gathered around a large fire.
Tats approached first.
“We moved five pounds already today, but the real action’s gonna be tonight, Mr. Brass.”
“Sounds good, Tats. First, I’d like a word with your crew.”
Tats nodded solemnly.
“All right listen up,” Righty began in an authoritative, yet not overbearing voice. “Tats here says you lack leadership. He says you’re getting squeezed by Heavy Sam. He says more than one of you thinks I’d be the right man for the job. So, let’s get a couple things clear. When I first started doing this, I wanted three things: money, more money, and still more money. Heading up a new organization was the last thing on my mind. But push has come to shove. Tats tells me all of our days of doing business are numbered because of Heavy Sam, and he says that for you to push back you’re gonna need someone you can get behind.
“I don’t want to work with anyone who doesn’t want to work with me. And I don’t want to lead anyone who doesn’t want me to lead. But the time has come to choose sides. I trust Tats on what he tells me about the situation, so that means I’m going to lead Tats and whoever’s part of his crew. But as of right now, to be part of Tats’ crew means you understand you answer to me and that I call the shots, period. If that doesn’t sound good to any of you, then as of right now you’re no longer part of Tats’ crew and might want to tread carefully around here.
“So, it’s time for a show of hands. Who wants to be part of my crew, with Tats second in command and Spider third in command?”
Everyone raised their hands, including an ugly fellow that caught Righty’s eye even in the faint detail permitted by the flicker of the flame in the merciless darkness. It looked like this guy had gotten into one hell of a scrape or had one clumsy barber because there were scars all over his face.
Righty then went around to each young tough and shook his hand while looking them right in their eyes and showing he meant business.
“I’m glad we’ve got that all worked out. Now, what separates a successful leader from a failure is the humility to admit when it is he who has to learn from his workers. And tonight that means you are going to be teaching me how the ground-level operations work.”
Each of the young toughs either nodded his head slightly or gave a look of understanding with his fierce eyes.
“My job,” Righty continued, “ is to watch and learn, make contacts, and, most importantly, provide a strong presence in case we get hassled by any of Sam’s goons. Now, one thing I want to make clear is that I’m not looking to go to war with Sam. Not just yet anyway. Our goal is going to be taking back any territory that you guys have lost from . . . and fast. Once that’s been done, we can negotiate from a position of strength. It might not be in our best interests to go to war with him, especially considering that right now we’re small and weak compared to him.
“Any questions?”
One by one each tough either shook his head while looking at Righty or shrugged his shoulders while looking at his peers to see if any of them had questions.
“All right, let’s do this. Tats will assign you into groups, and I’m going to be with Tats.”
Tats then started giving each of them instructions, and they all scampered off into the darkness, looking like wolves setting off on the hunt. There were three groups total, each with five pounds to move.
To Righty’s surprise, things ran so smoothly he felt a bit foolish for his prior anxiety. Righty accompanied Tats to one location after another for a quick introduction, an exchange of Green for green falons, and then they were on their way to the next. He felt a bit like an intern being led around a large warehouse on orientation day. He soon learned that Tats apparently did no business with end users but rather with a series of small retailers.
Most of these were small business owners—barbers, accountants, even doctors—who had apparently decided supplementing their income by offering more than their normal services to their clients was a good idea. But there was another type. These men were not accountants or doctors supplementing their income. They had hard, steely eyes and earned their living exclusively off of criminal activity. Righty could always differentiate these types immediately based on their bearing, but their type classification was further confirmed by Tats’ introduction of them via their street names.
Whereas the part-timers often seemed nervous and apprehensive of Righty, the full-time club was a different story. Their savage eyes seemed to bore into Righty, looking for a sign of weakness or hostile intention. Righty always met their hard stares full on with his own, shaking their hands confidently after Tats
gave the necessary introduction. Most of them seemed to be put at ease, relatively speaking, by the time each encounter was over.
At one point, Righty, perhaps feeling a bit over-confident, told Tats, “I thought you said this was dangerous,” laughing slightly.
“Believe it or not, the most likely place for trouble is at the end of the line. That’s where people are selling a gram here, a gram there in bars, pool halls, street corners, you name it. At the wholesale level, problems occur less frequently, but when they do, it tends to be nastier because more money is on the line.”
Righty had enough years of experience in the bar scene not to need any additional education on the matter. The thought of two knuckleheads pounding each other’s face in over a gram of Smokeless Green was about as hard for him to imagine as two stars in a dark sky. He had seen it happen more than three hundred times over a bad look, a spilled drink, or just for the hell of it, so with a pricy product like Smokeless Green thrown into the mix it seemed little surprise.
Towards the end of the night, Tats expressed frustration that they still had two pounds to move. Just then, Righty turned around uneasily as he heard someone approaching rather quickly.
“It’s cool,” Tats reassured him.
“It’s just Stitches.”
Righty liked the ugly punk even less now that he got a better look at him in the reflection of a street lamp.
“Hey, fellas, I gots a problem. I’s got one pound left to sell with my crew, but the dude says he needs at least two to make it worth his time.”
“Where’s he at?” Tats asked.
“Follow me,” Stiches said, grinning.
Righty felt uneasy about the whole thing, but he was supposed to be there to encourage bold action, so telling Tats to call the whole thing off because his ugly friend was giving him the creeps didn’t quite feel like it would be a consistent message.
A couple blocks later, it seemed Tats’ anxiety had been triggered as well: “Yo, Stitches. We passed Heavy’s border like three blocks ago, and you’re still movin’.”
“Do you wants to sell it, or don’t ya?” Stitches asked, in an almost mocking tone.
Righty once again felt himself unable to announce his concerns, as he had come there to put on a presence of force. Then, he thought he had the perfect face-saving solution: “Stitches, I said tonight we weren’t trying to start a war with Heavy Sam, just get back lost territory.”
Tats turned to him meekly, realizing he was going to have to take Stitches’ side on this one. “Mr. Brass, not only did this used to be our territory, but it used to extend another five blocks ahead.”
Righty knew he was outdone now and wished he had kept his trap shut. He was starting to feel like he had gotten in over his head. It dawned on him that the danger the lone individual can withdraw from while facing only the jeers of his own mind later is the danger a leader must confront on a stage where his subordinates are both his audience and judges. He felt like he had already shown a contemptible level of weakness in just this brief exchange and wondered what its repercussions might be.
“Down this way,” Stitches said with a calm Righty was beginning to find too calm.
Is this ugly little runt a good actor or just plain stupid? Righty asked himself.
But Tats seemed calm too, and Righty felt he had little choice but to follow as the three of them began walking down the dark alley.
When they got to the end of the alley, Righty saw Stitches approach a door and start knocking on it.
“Yo, what the hell? He told me, ‘Be back in twenty.’ And here we are not more than twenty minutes later. All right, you wait here; let me go check and see if he stopped at the bar around the corner to get a drink.”
Stitches had barely stated these words before he began walking back towards the entrance of the dead-end alley. Then, he was trotting. “Yo, I’ll be right back!” he said.
Before Stitches even reached the end of the alley, Righty saw what looked like a small army starting to enter. One of the men grabbed Stitches roughly by the arm and then suddenly let him go. The men continued to pour into the alley.
“Looks like my leadership of this organization will go down in the history books as rather short-lived,” Righty said to Tats, but the humor fell flat. Both were scared stiff.
“Carrying anything heavy?” Righty asked Tats.
Tats showed him a dagger in one hand and a decent-size club in his other.
“Now you listen to me reeeal good. Get down. Hide. Don’t come to my aid unless you see me getting trounced bad. Then, hit ‘em from behind with all you’ve got and make it count.”
“But Mr.—”
“Don’t argue. You said you wanted a boss, right?!”
Tats got down.
Righty began walking towards the group. No more men were filing into the alley, and it seemed there were around twenty heads.
“It’s good to see you came back from the bar. I was beginning to think I had brought those three pounds here all by myself for nothing!”
Silence.
The men continued marching towards him.
A strange calm descended upon Righty, as he realized the situation was black and white. Stitches had set him up, and he was going to have to kill every last one of these men or send them packing . . . or be killed.
At the subconscious level, his mind shifted towards Janie, who was probably at home right now worrying whether he was back at the bar or screwing around with some floozy, never the thought entering her mind that he was twelve hours away by coach in one of the most dangerous areas of Sivingdel about to meet his maker.
What a stupid, selfish ass I am!!
The thought dawned on him that he could be at home making sweet love to his wife rather than nearing his end with a group of wolf-like savages.
But nonetheless, an odd calm persisted in his mind. A calm that he realized was like a thin lid on top of a boiling cauldron of adrenaline and anxiety just waiting to go shooting out the top in about fifty different directions.
He calmly pulled his weapon out of the scabbard on his back.
“Hahahaha,” one of the men laughed.
They were about thirty feet away.
“They said this guy had a sword. All I see is a knife!”
Several of them giggled.
Righty thought he detected a bit of subservience in their giggles, and he noticed the joker was walking just slightly ahead of the others. They were carrying clubs, chains, broken bottles, daggers, and it looked like a few of them in the back had swords.
Suddenly, Righty began charging in a full sprint. This brought them to a screeching halt, as if they could not quite come to grips with what this lunatic was doing. Did he have an army hidden somewhere behind him?
Righty released the lever on his weapon, and in less than half a second ten inches of steel became six feet.
“CRAAAPP!!!” the joker shouted.
Righty brought the sword high over his head and brought it crashing down into the middle of the joker’s skull like an ax against wood on a chopping block.
Less than half a second later it had made its way down to the man’s lungs, and Righty quickly pulled the sword out and began a dizzying series of turns, swinging the sword around him in so rapid a manner it seemed to foretell the later invention of the propeller.
He had practiced this move relentlessly from the moment Pitkins had shown it to him three months ago. Pitkins had cautioned him that this had little practicality in a one-on-one match against a highly skilled opponent but that if he ever found himself hopelessly outnumbered it would be his only realistic chance of inflicting damage while preventing himself from being fatally encircled and overwhelmed.
He had stumbled over and over during his first month of practicing it, as it required so many spins, special footwork, and alternating the sword from one hand to the other. His blade made contact one by one with his enemies, and within seconds he was disemboweling stomachs, cutting off legs, and lopping off heads
.
Once he noticed that his enemies were beginning to keep their distance, he stopped spinning, realizing that he could only do that maneuver so long before he would fall to the ground and look up helplessly at a spinning sky while his enemies slashed him into tiny pieces.
He took a quick tally of the dead and wounded, and he saw ten men down. Most looked dead, but a few were still moving, clutching their disemboweled stomachs or the bleeding stumps where there were once legs.
Unfortunately, the ten men still standing seemed all too healthy and full of fight.
The Republic of Selegania Boxed Set: Volumes One through Four Page 46
