Rough Trade

by Todd Robinson

  It was going to be my fault.

  “We didn’t kill your courier. He was harassing my co-worker over there, and all we wanted to do was get him to back off. Everything else was incidental. You have all the cards right now. We have no reason to lie to you about this.”

  “Other than to save your own asses and making me feel like a right cunt in the meantime for trusting this bitch.” He jabbed the gun in the air at Kelly’s face. She flinched and cried out.

  “I’m swearing to you. She’s not involved other than the pure coincidence of it all.”

  “Then how did you get my money? How did you even know about my money?”

  “The dumbass left it at her house,” I said, pointing back at Ginny. “He had it in a hollow trumpet case. Until yesterday, I thought I was carrying a fucking trumpet.”

  “You’re joking.”

  I sighed under the weight of my own stupidity. “Wish I was. Didn’t even know it was yours. At this point, I don’t give two shits about anything other than clearing this plate.”

  “Start by giving me my fucking money!”

  “I…uh…didn’t bring it.”

  Summerfield lowered the gun and slumped into one of the plush chairs, beaten down by my nincompoopery. “Why didn’t you bring the money?”

  “Because I didn’t think that any of us were going to walk out of here once you had the money. You made your point. You can get to me and mine. I was planning on walking out with who I thought was her,” I said, gesturing to Kelly. “Then I was going to send back an uninvolved third party with your cash.”

  “What, were you going to FedEx it to me overnight?”

  I didn’t reply. That was exactly what I was going to do. It hadn’t seemed so stupid until he put it that way.

  “Oh Christ,” Summerfield said, realizing the same.

  “Wait a minute,” Junior chimed in, raising his hand like he was in the first grade. “Beyond the clusterfuck already laid out before us here, we didn’t kill Byron. You’re saying you didn’t either. So, then, who did?”

  That was a damned good question.

  Summerfield, with a strained look, stood from his chair and walked to the bar. He took a tiny key from his pocket and opened a small decorative safe above the wine glasses. “I don’t want to kill anybody.” From the safe, he brought out a decanter of ridiculously expensive-looking cognac. “I didn’t kill Byron, nor did I attempt to make it look like you two did. You two boneheads managed to do that all on your own.” He poured a good four fingers into a snifter and downed it with a thick cough at the end. “Killing people brings business to a halt. Makes the police take notice of you, no matter how much you pay them to stay out of your endeavors.”

  “That why you sent your man to kill everybody at Ginny’s house?” I said.

  Just when I thought I couldn’t get Summerfield or myself any more confused, he said, “What are you talking about now?”

  “Galal Shaughness.”

  “Who the fuck is that?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. I have no idea who that is. And I’m pretty sure that Galal Shaughness is precisely the kind of name I would remember if it came across my desk.”

  He had me there.

  “Well, then, this all points to a third party dicking with the both of us,” I said.

  “I don’t care anymore. Just get me my money. Byron is dead. You’re not in jail for killing Byron, so you have that. I didn’t kill him. So we have that too.”

  “What’s your point?” Junior said. “I lost both of you five minutes ago.”

  “My point is that I’m sick of all of this. So why don’t we apply Occam’s Razor to this scenario.”

  Junior stood up. “You wanna settle this with a knife fight? Let’s do it, fucko!”

  Summerfield looked at me. “Is he…what?” Summerfield opened his arms wide, hoping someone would assist Junior.

  “It’s not a real razor, Junior,” I said.

  “Oh,” Junior said, sitting back down. “Go on.”

  Summerfield shook the stupid out of his head and went on. “Occam’s Razor is a principle of simplicity. Whether or not there is a conspiratorial third hand in play with all of this, you have my money, and I have your...” he looked over at Kelly and Ginny “…whatever your relationship to those two is.”

  “So we’re at an impasse,” I said.

  “No, we’re not. The threat still stands. I am going to shoot one of them in the stomach in ten minutes unless you bring me my money. Ten minutes later, I shoot the other one. I want my goddamn money.”

  “Thought you didn’t want to kill anybody,” Junior said.

  “I’m going to make an exception with you lot. Enough is enough.”

  “That’s not—” Ollie’s phone started blaring “The Imperial March” in my coat pocket. “Hold on a sec.”

  “Make it quick, please.”

  I fumbled in the pocket and pulled out Ollie’s cell. I swiped the screen, and it automatically opened to the text messages Ollie had sent.

  And everything fell into place.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “What?” Junior said, reading me like a book. A book with lots of pictures, if we were going to be honest.

  I slid the phone across the desk to him. He picked it up and squinted. Then his face broke into a mask of horror. “Oh, hell no! You couldn’t have warned me first?” He slammed the phone face-down onto the oak and slid it roughly back to me. “Gross, dude.”

  “What is it now?” Summerfield said with a sigh.

  I slid the phone in his direction. He picked up the cell, and his face immediately darkened at what he saw. Unlike Junior, he scrolled up at the series of messages…

  …and pictures.

  Summerfield placed the phone down gently and slowly lifted his eyes to Marcus.

  Marcus started to stand, a sickly expression and pallor visible even under his cracked noseguard and busted face. “Mr. Summerfield…” was all he said before the three bullets smacked into his chest.

  The slugs burst out of Marcus’s back and shattered the glass overlooking the dance floor. He toppled through the frame and dropped the thirty feet to the parquet, his neck crunching loudly as he hit the floor with the back of his head.

  Kelly screamed. Junior dove to the side. Cornrows’ and the Lineman’s eyes bugged out. Ginny shrieked underneath the tape. Alex fainted.

  “Well, that answers that,” Summerfield said, opening his coat and putting the gun back into his shoulder holster. “And now you know that I’m not fucking around anymore.”

  Everybody was motionless, silent in the impact of Marcus’s straight-up execution. I still had questions. He sure as hell couldn’t ask them now. The who-what-where-when and why had died along with Marcus. I guess all the answers that Summerfield required were in the phone.

  The photos of Marcus and Byron in flagrante delicto. Or to put it in terms Junior would understand, dicks ahoy!

  Peppered between the pictures were the desperate and threatening texts. Warnings about what Byron would do with the graphic photos if Marcus didn’t help him. Help him with what was still a question, but it wasn’t too hard to connect the most obvious dots. Byron wanted Marcus on his side, one way or the other. What he got was his head caved in. Both of their heads.

  I was doing a lot of assuming, since the brain from which the details could be extracted was slowly leaking out of an ear onto a dance floor.

  “You two,” Summerfield said to his now ashen-faced goons, waving a hand toward Alex, “put him downstairs on a bloody couch or someplace where I’m not going to trip over him. Then clean that mess up.”

  The two looked at each other. This was clearly more than they had signed on for. If they were anything like me and Junior, they’d simply taken a gig, nothing more. A little muscle work, a little threatening. But from their expressions, it was clear they were in conflict about what to do next.

  “The cleaning supplies are in the basement closet next to the
walk-in,” Summerfield said.

  They were two guns against one.

  They could choose to end it right there.

  I tried as hard as I could with my mental powers to convince them to come around to our side.

  “You got it, boss,” Cornrows said. The two walked out of the VIP lounge, each shooting me a solid glare as they exited.

  Dammit.

  So much for my mental powers. Maybe I shouldn’t have kicked the crap out of them quite so much in our previous encounters.

  “Let’s make this fun for you, Mr. Malone,” Summerfield said, taking his gun back out and waving it languorously between Kelly and Ginny. “I’m going to let you choose which one of these women I shoot in the stomach.”

  Ginny’s eyes went wide.

  Kelly glared at me with more anger than fear. Fear was there, though. A lot of it.

  The hell was she glaring at me for?

  “I came here for you. I just want you to know that,” I said to her.

  Kelly looked back to me. “I’m not sure this is the time or place.” She scrunched up her face in an exaggeration of thought. “No. Scratch that. I’m positive this isn’t the time or place.”

  Hell. I tried.

  Junior chimed in before I could respond. “Wait a minute. I have some questions before we go get your money.”

  Oh, dear Christ.

  Junior held up a finger. “Let’s say we go get your loot, and hand it over to you. You gonna let us go? Just like that?”

  Summerfield mulled over the question for a second. I didn’t like the options he was considering. “Yes.”

  “Now, how does that make sense?” Junior asked.

  “Excuse me?” Summerfield said.

  “I mean,” Junior said. “What’s to stop us at this point from calling the cops once we’re gone? There’s no way the mess you’ve left with Marcus’s body is going to be cleaned up by the time they get here.”

  “Junior…” I said.

  “Hang on, Boo,” he said. “I mean, what sort of guarantee do you have that we’re not going to get on the horn to the peedee the second we’re outside? They’ll have you for murder, at least. With the other witnesses, you’ve got kidnapping,” Junior counted off the offenses on his fingers, “assault, menacing, felonious haberdashery…”

  Summerfield looked at me.

  I hoped Junior was going somewhere with this. Otherwise, he was just handing Summerfield every reason he’d need to drop our ground-up corpses into the Atlantic.

  “And I’m willing to bet that your nice and shiny club has all kinds of highly illegal goodies hidden in clever places. Am I right?” Junior lowered his face and smiled in a way that I was sure he thought was Clooney-esque. “Amirite, Ian?”

  “You’re not helping, Junior,” I said.

  “Oh, but I am.” Junior stood at the end of the long table, fingers crooked in the lapel of his pea coat like he was the hardcore version of Atticus Finch. “I’m stalling.”

  “Uh…why?” I said.

  “Stupid weather. Traffic is a bitch, I’m figuring.”

  A crashing boom echoed through the empty club.

  Summerfield raised his gun, unsure where to point it. “What the fuck is that?”

  “Put the gun down, ya big scrote,” Junior said. “That there is the motherfucking feds.”

  Summerfield’s eyes went into panic mode.

  From the club’s entrance, the sound of metal doors being rammed reverberated through the cavernous nightclub. Voices yelled, “On the floor! On the floor!” I guessed that Cornrows and Lineman would be getting on the floor toot sweet.

  Junior grinned his widest, most irritating smirk. “This a bad time to tell everybody that I’m wearing a wire?”

  Every mouth in the room fell open at the exact same moment. Even Ginny managed a low-hanging chin underneath the duct tape.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this?” I said.

  “I didn’t want you to judge me,” Junior said.

  Through the broken mirrored glass, I saw a half dozen SWAT dudes storming the club, automatic weapons raised and scanning the room. “Up here,” I said, raising my arms, for the first time in my life, deliriously happy to see men with guns.

  I turned back to the room. “I think everybody should raise their hands and drop any weapons, if they have them.”

  Junior and Kelly both held their hands high.

  Ginny mumble-grumbled more of what were undoubtedly colorful damnations of both me and future generations of the Malone bloodline. “You’re excused, Ginny.”

  “Uh, Boo?” Junior said, lifting his head toward Summerfield.

  Oh shit.

  He hadn’t dropped his gun.

  He’d gone ash-white and his breathing was ragged, panting.

  Junior lowered his hands.

  I lowered mine.

  Remember that sixth sense I was talking about?

  Summerfield was about to do something really, really bad.

  He raised the gun at Junior’s chest and fired.

  Chapter Twenty

  As Summerfield’s hand came up, I reacted, dipping my shoulder low under the big table and flipping it up between us. The first shot hit right in the spot where it would have nailed Junior in the sternum. The thick wood splintered on our side of the table, but held. Thank God for Summerfield’s sense of opulence. Any table at The Cellar would have exploded and burst into flames.

  The second and third bullets hit the table by my leg and an inch from my nose.

  “Fuck,” Junior yelled, clutching his face. He’d been hit with the hot splinters popping off the table’s underside. “I can’t fucking see!”

  Then I heard the hidden door next to the bar slam shut.

  I poked my head up. No Summerfield. He’d made a run for it.

  Ginny was bouncing up and down in her chair.

  “Are you okay? Are you hit?”

  Through her terrified sobs, she shook her head no.

  “Kelly?”

  No response.

  “Kelly!”

  I scanned the floor of the room through the haze of gunpowder smoke and wood dust.

  She wasn’t on the floor.

  She wasn’t in the room.

  Summerfield had taken her.

  And in that moment.

  In that realization.

  I went into beast mode.

  I didn’t know where the release was on our side of the room for the hidden door.

  Didn’t matter.

  I charged the door in a fury, throwing my full weight against it. The door gave a fraction. I threw myself at it again. Something cracked. It might have been wood, might have been something inside my skeletal structure.

  I wasn’t feeling a goddamn thing any more.

  There wasn’t going to be any pain.

  Not for me.

  But somebody else sure as shit was getting some.

  Third time I hit it, I came crashing through the door like a cannonball, the wood thankfully thinner than that of the table. The secret entry/exit led to a concrete stairwell going up and down. I knew that these clubs could be a labyrinth of hallways, connecting offices to buildings and other clubs.

  I had no idea which way they’d gone.

  I could hear footsteps, and Kelly pleading, but couldn’t determine from the echoes which direction they were coming from.

  Then I heard Kelly yell, “Down here! He has a gun.”

  She must have thought the door smashing was the Feds coming through, ready to save the day like the disciplined professionals they were.

  Then I heard a dull, slapping impact, and Kelly grunt.

  I couldn’t wait for the Feds. She’d have to settle for little ol’ me.

  I charged down the stairs two, three at a time.

  I took one step too many, and heard my knee pop. It didn’t hurt, but I couldn’t put weight on it any more. I half dragged myself down the remaining two flights and burst out the door into an underground parking garage.

&nbs
p; Summerfield was trying to move Kelly into the passenger seat of his Lexus, a thin line of blood dribbling from the hairline over her swelling eye, a souvenir from where it looked like he’d pistol whipped her. She was putting up some resistance, but clearly aware of the gun still in his hand.

  The garage exploded in all the red tones of Hell itself. I howled and charged him like an enraged gorilla.

  He wasn’t moving in slo-mo like the movies would have you believe. But he wasn’t moving quite as quickly as the furious two hundred forty pounds of me.

  Every bone in my hand crunched with the intensity of the fist I clenched. Then I threw a haymaker with murderous intentions.

  And then missed. By a lot. Again.

  In the time it took me to close the distance between us, he dropped Kelly to the ground, ducked under my fist, and brought his knee up at the same time.

  Oh yeah. He was really good at kung fu and all that jazz.

  And remember what I said about how much I hated jazz?

  I impaled myself on his knee so deeply, I think his kneecap went through my belly and bounced off my spine. All the wind rushed from my lungs and momentum drove me past him and into the car door. He threw a lightning fast elbow to my cheek, and I saw stars.

  I still had enough sense in me to grab his gun hand and slam his wrist onto the doorframe, the gun slipping from his sweaty grasp, clattering along the trunk and falling to the ground.

  The gun out of play, I smashed my forearm into his face.

  Once.

  His nose popped.

  Twice.

  His head snapped back.

  Three times.

  Two of his teeth came away, embedded into my wrist meat.

  Then I got greedy and went for four.

  As I drew back, he knife-handed me to the throat and my windpipe slammed shut. I stumbled backward and fell over Kelly’s legs. She was trying to crawl away, having regained at least that much of her senses.

  I couldn’t breathe, and instinctively clutched my neck as I stood.

  With the space between us that he needed, Summerfield leapt into a Superman punch, connecting it to my eyebrow. The garage shuttered into blackness for a microsecond, and I was on my ass.

  Summerfield turned his back to me.

  Exactly like the last time he’d kicked me in the face.