She glanced at the clock above the door for the seventh time in three minutes and growled in the back of her throat when she saw it displaying the exact same time as her previous glance.
“Oh, don’t be all frowny like that,” came a country drawl from across the bar. Kitty uttered a silent curse and plastered a saccharine smile to her face before turning to address the owner of the voice.
“Just ready to go home, is all.” She kept her reply friendly and conversational. People tipped more when they thought it might help a friend. “What can I get ya?”
The voluptuous little blond woman seated at the bar smiled broadly, “Whiskey, neat.”
“Coming right up, Mindy.”
Mindy was a new player around Dockside. Kitty pegged her as an okay sort. She dressed like a hooker, but she would brand herself a hypocrite for judging that too harshly. Small, hugely endowed, blindingly blond, and possessing a chipper way about her that would have been amusing if it was not so intense, Mindy had made herself a regular on the nights Kitty worked. One did not need telepathy to understand the reason for that.
At least she came off as likable enough, for a customer. Like most of her regulars, the little blond came here more to ogle Kitty than she did to enjoy the booze or music. It was nice to be ogled a little, so Kitty did not take offense. But Mindy also worked for Tank, and that made her something of a VIP in these parts. Normally this would be a good thing. Specifically, the sort of thing an enterprising gal like Kitty might work to her advantage, considering Mindy had obviously taken a special shine to her favorite bartender.
Kitty would be lying if she said she had not considered working that angle. A fling with Mindy did not make for an unappetizing prospect. The little woman had the kind of figure that could put a teenage boy through puberty in forty seconds. To the boy’s everlasting chagrin, he would find Mindy did not fancy males in that way. Kitty liked boys just fine, though she found girls to be all kinds of fun, too. With her own striking figure, having extra dating options left the popular bartender with plenty of candidates when the mood to mingle came over her. She could have Mindy eating out of her hand any time she wanted to and this both thrilled and frightened her.
It thrilled because the flirty little blond was a very dangerous woman and Kitty liked danger. Fooling around with the most successful assassin currently working was exactly the species of bad decision Kitty had a reputation for making. A quick glance at the patrons still in-house confirmed that half the people currently in Hideaway were dangerous to one degree or another. One more professional assassin ordering watered-down drinks did not constitute the kind of risk that ruined Kitty’s evening with dread. What made the pretty bartender nervous was the Tank problem.
Kitty turned to the row of bottles behind her and stretched out to grab a handle of expensive bourbon. In truth the bottle had only held expensive bourbon once, its current contents being of a more working-class variety. Most customers could not tell the quality stuff from the rotgut and were as happy with the illusion as the real thing. Kitty made sure to give a good long stretch as she reached, just enough to let her tiny shorts ride up and present her derriere in its optimum configuration. People tipped more when they got to leer at her, Mindy better than most.
After a brief pause to allow the woman a nice gawk, Kitty turned back to the bar and grabbed a snifter. Before she could pour the drink, her customer flashed a knowing smile and wink, placing her hand over the top of the glass.
“Nuh-uh, Kitty-cat. I know Rodney fills those with cheap shit. I can smell it, too.” Her nose crinkled, “I’d rather have the good stuff.”
“Right.” Kitty smiled back. She made it both apologetic and innocent. “Sorry, Mindy.”
“No harm done. It ain’t your fault Rodney is a cheap ass.”
Kitty returned to the liquor shelf and fished around for an actual container of top shelf bourbon. With her back to Mindy she allowed a small frown to mar her features. Mindy might be dangerous in an exciting way, but Tank was just plain terrifying. The hard-boiled Dockside bartender did not fear much of anything anymore, making the big fixer an outlier. She had learned to navigate the dirty streets and treacherous alleys of her home better than most. More than one mugger or would-be-rapist had suffered brutal injury for underestimating the punky pink-haired girl from Z-Block. Kitty rested easy knowing she could handle herself when things got rough. She took great pride in this fact most of the time. But nobody handled Tank, and this made her nervous. She had seen a few folks try themselves against the giant and the results still nauseated her when she thought about it.
Tank had been coming to Hideaway for business as long as Kitty could remember. He never bought a drink. He never made small talk. He never made eye contact with her or snuck lurid peeks at her ass like other men did. His giant body radiated cold violence the way Mindy’s radiated sexual heat.
Kitty had seen men with ‘dead’ eyes before. The kind of people who had seen so much horror they could not summon enough leftover emotion to have a facial expression were a familiar sight in Dockside. Hideaway, being a place that attracted that type in droves, allowed her to observe and understand these folks. If a blank stare had represented Tank’s whole mystique, she would not have thought twice about the man. His aura of menace was so much more complex than that. His demeanor, so cold and gruff, had been forged by something different and her inability to place it gave her chills that Mindy shared by association.
Unfailingly polite, he always tipped well for his information. This was literally the entire sum of their interactions for the last seven years. She had tried to engage him, to feel him out. To date, success on this front had proven stubbornly elusive. No quantity of flirting, friendly banter, or gratuitous sexual overture could penetrate his icy countenance. She was the object of a thousand unrequited sexual fantasies every night, yet to the scariest man in town she might as well have been a potted plant. It was the sort of thing that could make a girl self-conscious.
It did not come across as anger or acrimony when he rebuffed her or outright ignored her. It was as if he did not see her at all. She could not shake the feeling that Tank saw things as either threats or goals. Being neither, Kitty simply did not exist to the man. That had to be the worst part. He did not dislike her; he simply did not register her existence. Worse than this, Tank actually made her boss nervous.
She had seen him tear this bar apart twice since she started working here. From her post behind the bar, she had watched him kill a dozen men with his bare hands. The local guys had a weird sort of respect for him, especially since the fight over in Quinzy a year prior. They all hated dealing with him of course, but she could tell they all loved having him around at the same time. Kitty just knew he was big, and scary, and more than a little mean.
“Lose a bottle back there, darlin?” Mindy’s voice broke into her reverie, startling her. “Or are you just trying to give me a good look at ya?”
Her vacant smile reattached, Kitty turned and brought the dusty bottle of Eagle Rare over to Mindy’s waiting glass. “Sorry. Long night, y’know?”
Feeling charitable, Kitty let a generous quantity of the tawny liquid splash into the faux-crystal tumbler. Mindy’s nose twitched and she smiled. “That’s the good stuff.”
“You can smell the difference?”
Mindy’s eyes danced with glee. “I have a very good nose. I can sniff out good hooch from bad hooch, or find a rotten apple in a bushel. I can also smell when somebody who started out calm and relaxed is suddenly very nervous.” Slender fingers flipped the glass to her lips, and Mindy downed the whiskey in a single pull. The tumbler skipped over the back of her hand to roll across her knuckles. Then it dropped toward the bar where it was caught deftly in Mindy’s other hand. “Ahhhhhhhh!” the little blond sighed with delight. Then she flipped her hair back to look at Kitty. “Why so twitchy all of a sudden? Is it me?”
Mindy almost sounded worried. Kitty had been so caught up in her thoughts of Tank she had almost f
orgotten that Mindy spent most of the time in dogged romantic pursuit of her. Though the words felt strange to say, Kitty turned to the most successful assassin in known space and said, “It’s not you Mindy. Sorry.” People who knew Mindy’s profession were usually afraid of her, so the mistake was understandable. Because she had time to kill, Kitty asked Mindy a bizarre question.
“What’s he like?”
Mindy frowned. “Who?”
“Tank.”
The frown deepened. “What do you mean? You don’t...” There was a question in the last bit, both confused and nervous. Kitty nearly laughed at the ridiculous implications.
“Oh God! No! Ugh, no! Just...” she shuddered. “No.”
This seemed to help Mindy relax. “What do you want to know? And why?”
Kitty rested her elbows on the bar, only incidentally giving Mindy a clear view of her cleavage. “He scares me.”
Mindy smiled at this display and shook her head. “Easy, girl. I was doing that trick when you were still in grade school.” Mindy pointed to her own prodigious chest. “I got ’em too.”
The bartender nodded, acknowledging the riposte and stood up again.
“Not that I don’t appreciate it...” Mindy added.
“A girl likes to know she’s appreciated,” Kitty replied. Sandstorms whipping across the Sahara were not as dry as her tone.
Mindy decided to answer the question before Kitty found someone else to talk to. “Roland is not as bad as you think he is.” She stopped, tilted her head and considered this for a moment. Then she tried again. "Okay. I'm sure he's as bad as you think he is. Maybe worse.” She shook her head, “Probably way worse. But my point is that he’s not evil or twisted or anything. The funny thing is that of all the people in here—” she gestured to the bar and its contingent of thugs and killers, “—you are probably the only one who has absolutely nothing to fear from him.”
“Really?” Kitty’s incredulity was writ large in her crinkled brow.
“You’ve seen him tear this place up, right?”
Kitty nodded. “Who hasn’t? He does it real regular-like.”
“So you at least have some idea of what he can do.”
Kitty nodded again. “He’s real damn tough.”
“Yeah, well you have no damn idea. He can do a lot more than bust heads. You heard about Quinzy?”
“Yeah. Supposedly he destroyed a giant cyborg thing with a hammer.” The roll of her eyes indicated exactly what she thought of that particular story.
“Ain’t no ‘supposedly’ about it. I was there.” Mindy waggled her empty glass and cast a lustful look at the bottle of bourbon still in Kitty’s hand.
Pink eyebrows rose at this. “I assumed the guys were drunk or exaggerating. Probably both.” She poured another drink for Mindy. “Don’t chug this one,” she added.
Mindy raised the glass in salute and sipped demurely at its edge before continuing. “I can’t tell you why Roland is the way he is, or even what it is that he is.” She frowned, double checking to make sure the sentence made sense. Satisfied, she continued. “But I can tell you this for sure. Roland doesn’t hurt people without a reason. He doesn’t always need a terribly good reason, mind you. But he’s never gone after anyone who wasn’t at least asking for it.”
“How come he doesn’t talk to me? It’s weird.”
“That’s the really funny part, Kitty. He’s scared of you.”
This was more than Kitty was willing to buy. “That’s just crazy!”
“Nope. You’re his kryptonite. Roland can’t talk to pretty girls.”
Kitty was about to call Mindy out for pulling her leg, but something about that kind of made sense in a strange, perverse way. “So all the times I spent trying to get him to tip more or buy a drink you figure I just scared him off?”
“Yup.”
“Wait a damn minute. You’re pretty. He talks to you!”
“You think I’m pretty?” Mindy’s reply came off as strangely earnest.
Kitty ignored the question. “And that woman, Lucia. He seems fine with her.”
Thwarted, Mindy put on a pout to express her displeasure. “Roland doesn’t talk to me. He growls at me and calls me names. And Lucia?” The whiskey glass rose again to wet her whistle. “Lucia is something else entirely.” The glass descended, and Mindy’s tone grew serious. “Here’s the deal, Kitty. You don’t need to worry about Roland one way or the other. Because as far as he’s concerned there are only two kinds of women in the universe. The first and most important kind is Lucia. She gets a whole category to herself because he is a real basic thinker like that.”
“And the other type?”
Mindy tipped the glass a third time and drained it before responding with a scowl. “All the rest of us.”
Kitty could not suppress a smile. “That’s kind of sweet, actually.”
“He had to be taught not to kill everyone who irritates him, you know. Like actually instructed on how to not murder folks.”
“Okay,” Kitty backpedaled. “That’s less sweet.”
Mindy shook her head. “I’ll talk to him. He doesn’t know he’s scaring you, and he’ll probably feel awful for doing it.” Kitty suspected Roland’s discomfort would greatly amuse Mindy.
Then she gasped at the thought of a chastised Tank coming to see her. “No! Don’t do that. Oh God! That’ll make it worse!”
Mindy dismissed this with a wave of her hand. “Nah. He’s trying to do better, so he needs to hear this stuff. Lucia says it’s good for him. Besides, he’s actually a decent guy if you can get past all his grouchiness and scowling.”
“What’s she like?”
“The boss?” Mindy grinned. “Lucia is even scarier than Roland.”
Kitty scowled, “I was in here the first time she came in. She didn’t look that scary to me.”
“Was that the same night she gave Barney his limp?”
Kitty winced, remembering. “Oh yeah. I was hiding for that part, though.”
“That’s why she’s scary. You already underestimate her, and everyone who does that regrets it. Lucia is smarter than all of us, and she is real big on getting what she wants.” Mindy leaned in to speak without being overheard. “Remember how we kicked The Combine and The Brokerage out of Dockside?”
Kitty did remember. The two giant criminal enterprises had squabbled over Dockside until Roland broke both of them. So much had changed in a year that she hardly recognized her town.
“That was mostly Lucia’s plan. She put everyone where they needed to be, and then swept them off the board.”
Kitty whistled, low and long. “She did all that?”
“Well, I helped too. Basically the boss sets things up so Roland and I can knock ‘em down.”
“Wow,” Kitty breathed, legitimately impressed.
“Yup. The boss is pretty hardcore. Hard to believe she used to be a fancy Uptown executive sort.”
“Really?” Kitty had forgotten to be bored. “What happened?”
“Long story. The short version is that somebody kidnapped her dad, and she hired Roland to help get him back. A bunch of folks got killed in the process and they’ve been together ever since.”
“How romantic.” Kitty harbored severe doubts about whether or not romance actually worked like that, but the story was good either way.
Mindy’s horrified reaction confirmed her suspicions. “Y’all do romance real different in Dockside, Kitty.”
“You don’t know the half of it, Mindy.”
The chime of her comm in her ear jolted Kitty to attention. Only Rodney used that comm channel, and that usually coincided with bad news.
“Is that blond trollop out there, lass?” The Dwarf’s brogue wore thin tonight, further proof that something was indeed amiss.
Mindy grumbled, “Tell the little shit I can hear him, Kitty.” She tapped her left ear. “They’re bionic.”
Kitty ignored Mindy. “Yeah, she’s here.”
“Send her into me
office. Looks like the shite’s just hit the fookin’ fan again.”
CHAPTER FOUR
It remained a perennial mystery to Roland as to why any of these hoods thought things would go differently.
For close to thirty years, he had been cracking heads in Dockside, keeping the gang wars to a minimum and ensuring that high-powered Uptown interests felt secure enough to leave the local economy alone. Business had been brisk of late, and while his origins and full capabilities stayed mysterious, everybody in town knew that he was very hard to kill. He was an infamous figure, both respected and feared by everyone who was anyone in the New Boston criminal rackets. That he had to once again hit the streets and put the boots to yet another new group of petty criminals wore on his temper in manner often dangerous to those who found themselves its target.
Nevertheless, there he stood, the hour well after midnight and Roland a looming shadow poorly lit by street lights in a dark alley. Completing the scene, a half dozen drug pushers were arranged in a fidgeting semi-circle before him. Each had a weapon drawn and six gaping barrels stared like unblinking black eyes at his own impassive face. Once again Roland faced down stupid men in a tired Raymond Chandler cliché.
The big man lacked the energy to complete all the requisite steps in this dance, so he skipped to the end. “Oh, you have got to be shitting me, guys.” He could not even muster enough malevolence to growl it. The whole scene was just too asinine. “Put those away before you get hurt. I have rules about idiots who pull guns on me.”
It was possible to determine how long someone had been in town by the weapons they chose to use against Dockside’s most famous fixer. A quick perusal of the assorted small arms on display made it rather apparent that this group had arrived rather recently. There had been a lot of these lately, the recent shifts in the economic landscape giving the impression that Dockside was ripe for infiltration. Normally this did not bother Roland as it meant steady work for him. Nevertheless, playing this same game three nights a week had him seriously considering barber college.
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