by Frank Zafiro
I recognized him in an instant. His name was Leon and he worked for a pimp named Rolo. The last time I saw the two of them, I ended up on the wrong side of a beating in the alley behind The Hole, the dive bar that served as Rolo’s home base. Leon and another one of Rolo’s muscle tuned me up in the alley. Then, to add insult to injury, they took my father’s leather bomber jacket off my back and sent me packing. It wasn’t like my Dad and I were close at all, but the goddamn jacket was the only thing I had left of him.
All of this happened in the middle of winter, and I think I would have ended up suffering hypothermia on the walk home if it hadn’t been for the kindness of a security guard downtown. Clell and I became friends after that, and we see each other once a week or so. But I’ve made a point not to run across Rolo or his thugs since that February encounter at The Hole.
I stared up at Leon, taking a moment to decide what to do. If he had wanted to hurt me somehow, he could have caught me by surprise while my head was buried in the newspaper. He hadn’t done that, so I had to think his purpose was a more peaceful one. Or maybe this was a chance encounter. Maybe he was downtown shopping or running an errand for Rolo and just walked in for a cup of coffee.
Somehow I didn’t think so.
I cleared my throat. “Long time,” I said.
He didn’t react.
I thought about offering him the seat across from me, but the truth was I didn’t want him to sit down. I wanted him to leave.
“The man want to see you,” Leon said, his voice a deep baritone.
I digested what he’d said. Rolo wanted to see me? Why?
I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s such a great idea. It didn’t work out so great for me last time.”
“This be different,” Leon said.
“Different?”
Leon nodded.
I wasn’t sure what different meant or why on Earth Rolo would want to see me, but the thought of delivering myself up to him on his home turf at The Hole was about as appealing as chewing glass.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
I expected Leon to tell me that Rolo wasn’t asking, he was telling me. I sat there wondering what I could have done to offend him or even attract his attention since our last encounter, but I drew a blank. Leon stood there, unmoving. Did he have orders to grab me up and force me to come if I refused to cooperate?
After that, I started considering what Leon had in the bag, and what caliber it was.
The hiss and spit of an espresso machine filled the air, coupled with the casual conversation of the newly arrived customers. Everyone seemed oblivious to the exchange between Leon and me—meaning there’d be no good witnesses if this turned into a kidnapping, especially if Leon kept it quiet.
I took a sip of my coffee. It was still hot. Not hot enough to be excruciating, but still enough to seriously burn. And distract. If I threw it in Leon’s face, then stood up and hit him before he could –
Leon stepped forward casually and dropped the grocery bag on the empty chair across from me.
“Peace offering,” Leon said. The confusion on my face must have been plain, because Leon shook his head at me slightly. “So’s you don’t worry about your skinny white ass.”
I glanced at the grocery bag and back to Leon. “What’s in the bag?”
“Two hours from now,” Leon said. “At The Hole.”
He turned and strode from the Rocket, moving with the athletic ease of a running back despite his bulk. I watched him go until he was out the door and disappeared around a corner.
I looked at the bag again. I hesitated a few moments, but curiosity overcame me. If it was a bomb or a rattlesnake, so be it. I rose from my chair, reached out and grabbed it. As soon as I lifted the bag, I knew what it was, but I peeled open the top and looked inside anyway.
A worn, coffee-colored patch of leather stared back up at me.
My dad’s leather bomber jacket.
4
I drove out to The Hole.
I’d debated what to do for another half hour after Leon left the Rocket, but in the end, I had not choice. Rolo knew where to find me, so if I refused Leon or someone like him would pay me a visit. And I'm sure it wouldn't be as peaceful as our discussion at the Rocket.
Even with the leather jacket as a peace offering, this could be a set up. I doubted that almost as soon as the thought formed. If Rolo wanted to elminate me, there were better options, and he was too smart not to choose one of them. The cops knew The Hole was his place. He’d waited more than a year since our last meeting, so he couldn’t still see me as a loose end. No, I decided, our meeting had to be about something else.
Despite how sure I was about that, I swung by my apartment first and picked up my .45. The short barreled Smith and Wesson model 457 was a reassuring weight in the small of my back. Last time I was at The Hole, I really wished I’d had it. I wasn’t going to make the mistake of going in there a second time without it.
I pulled up outside the grungy bar in the East Sprague district and parked in the lot. I picked a space closest to the street entrance so it would be harder for someone to block me in without being obvious.
I locked my little Celica, adjusted my belt and canted the grip of my pistol toward the right for an easier draw. I tried to swallow but my mouth was dry. The broken asphalt of the parking lot had weeds growing up through the cracks. Behind me, steady traffic slid by on Sprague. I looked up and down the street. Just across the street at a bus stop, a skinny woman in capri pants and long blond hair stood pretending to wait for the bus. She gave me an querulous look and raised her head slightly. I could see the red sores on her neck from where I stood. I looked away. Several other hookers trolled the street in the distance.
I took a huge breath and let it out. The stench of stale, wet garbage wafted through the parking lot. There were a couple of other cars, both full size four doors. I was pretty sure the owners were looking at fifty in the rearview.
There wasn’t any choice, unless I wanted to leave River City. Rolo wasn’t all-powerful but if he wanted to find me, he could. He’d already proven that with Leon’s visit. And if he wanted to hurt me, he could. He proved that the last time we’d met. So the only way out of this dilemma was through it.
The door squealed on its hinges, The inside of The Hole was darker than the weak daylight outside, and it took a second for my eyes to adjust. Everyone in the place looked at me, but no one turned their heads to do so. The Hole was a place where everyone saw everything but if anyone’s asking, no one ever saw a thing.
I recognized the bartender, a stout white guy with a fading USMC tattoo on his forearm. There were a half dozen patrons scattered around the place, but my eyes went straight to the booth in the corner. Rolo was a big man, almost Leon’s size, though where Leon leaned toward muscular, Rolo leaned toward fat. His beard was tightly trimmed and he wore his hair shaved so short he was almost bald. That was the opposite of what I’d been seeing around town. The shaggy afro style was coming back among young men in River City, black and white, but it didn’t surprise me that Rolo went the opposite direction. He wasn’t one to follow trends, I didn’t figure. Unless they made money, of course.
I walked slowly toward the corner booth. Leon stood nearby. Rolo had spotted me the moment I walked in the place, but he was in conversation with an Asian girl at his side. His tones were quiet and playful and the two broke into conspiratorial giggling as I approached.
Rolo looked up at me. His expression didn’t change much, but he did lean over and whisper in the woman’s ear.
“Sure, baby,” she cooed at him. She kissed his cheek and slid out of the seat. As she headed to the bar, she brushed past me, her breasts grazing my arm. I felt her heat momentarily, then she was gone.
Rolo raised his eyebrows at me. “She something, huh?”
I nodded. “Beautiful.”
“You’re motherfucking right,” Rolo said. “Right as rain.” He pointed to the empty seat across from
him.
I glanced around the bar, then at the bench seat he’d pointed to. Except for Leon, who stood fifteen feet away, I didn’t see any muscle.
“Relax,” Rolo said. “You ain’t got to be worried about shit. This is a business meetin’.” He smiled up at me knowingly. “’Sides, I know you brought yourself a little insurance policy this time around, didn’t you?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I slid into the booth across from him. “What’s this about?”
“Like I said. Business.”
“What business do we have?”
Rolo raised his finger and waved it at the bartender. A few moments later, the ex-Marine put a cold Molson in front of me. That was the same beer I’d ordered last time I was in the place, over a year ago. Rolo didn’t miss a thing.
I ignored the beer. Rolo and I stared at each other across the table. His expression was calm and unreadable, the face of a man who was both comfortable in his skin and confident of his mastery. I didn’t know what he read in my face, but I hoped it was enough to dissuade a repeat of my last visit.
“First things first,” Rolo said. He swirled the ice in his drink and sipped through the little black straws. “Our business from last time? Way I see it, we even.” He looked at me for confirmation.
Even? The last time I sat with Rolo in this very booth, his goons hauled me into the alley and kicked my ass. Then they took my jacket and sent me staggering away in subzero temperatures. And now we're even?
But I knew that he was right, at least in the way street accounting worked. In his mind, I still owed him at the end of our conversation because I’d tried to deceive him. The beating made us even.
I nodded to him. “We’re even.”
“Good,” Rolo said. He pointed at my jacket and added, “And that’s on me, just to show you we cool.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I settled for “Thanks.” I reached for the bottle, and took a sip of the cold Canadian.
Rolo nodded and scratched his chin. “So now we move into new business, right? And the thing is, everything we gonna talk about got to be confidential. You get me?”
I nodded.
“I need you to say it,” Rolo said.
“I get you,” I said. “Besides, who am I going to tell?”
Rolo gave me a false smile. “All your cop friends,” he said.
I clenched my jaw at the dig. He knew how most of the cops in this town felt about me. I’d blown an abduction case over a decade ago when I was still on the job. If I’d searched a house per protocol, little Amy Dugger would be about to graduate high school now. She’d be ready to go out into the world and get married and have her own little blond kids. But she was dead, and that was my fault. It’s why I turned in my badge. It’s also probably why I agreed to help Matt Sinderling last year. His daughter, Kris, was just about the age Amy would have been. She’d run away from home and her father wanted me to find her.
I did. But that didn’t work out so well, either. She’d gotten involved in pornography, and to get her out of it, I did some things that landed me in jail for a short time. All of this made me a complete outcast on the RCPD.
I reached under the table and rubbed my aching knee. The wounds I’d suffered in the line of duty before my fall from grace didn’t go too far when judgment day came. Cops don’t forgive.
But Rolo was talking about more than that. Last time we met, I tried to make Rolo think I still had some pull with the local police and that I could do him harm or good depending on how he helped me. That was the reason for the beating, and he was reminding me of it.
“Or,” Rolo added, “just the one that does the computer shit. You know who I mean. The chess player.”
I stared back at him, trying not to show that I was at once impressed and a little intimidated by how much he knew. I shouldn’t have been surprised, though. For a man like Rolo, information was power. Even outside of his world, he could probably find ways to get the information he needed.
“What do you want?” I asked him.
“To hire you,” Rolo answered.
That surprised me once again. I’m sure it showed on my face. “What?” I asked.
“I said, I want to hire you.” Rolo took another sip of his drink and watched me.
“Hire me to do what?”I managed.
“To do what you do. Find out what is going on with a situation.”
“I’m not a private—”
He waved away my protest before I could even finish the sentence. “I don’t give a fuck about any of that. I got a problem I can’t solve. You can help me. You gonna do that?”
I sat there, a little stunned. This entire scene was almost the complete opposite of the last time I’d been in The Hole, looking for information from Rolo. Now he wanted my help?
“How long you gonna take to decide?” he asked, his voice smooth.
I tried to swallow, but my mouth was still dry. I reached for the Molson and took a slow drink. Then I said, “What are we talking about?”
Rolo shook his head. “No. You got to agree, and then we talk details.”
I took another sip of the beer, then asked, “How can I know if I agree until I know what you want?”
Rolo grinned and turned his hands up. “I guess you gotta have faith.”
I considered for another moment, but I knew what my answer had to be. Even if I had to go straight to the police station after this conversation and report everything, I had to go along with him now.
“All right,” I said. “I agree.”
Rolo nodded his approval. He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a photograph and dropped it in front of me.
I looked down and was surprised again. It was the beautiful black woman Adam and I had seen at the Rocket. I tried to hide my recognition from Rolo.
“Who is she?”
“One of my ladies,” he said.
I gave him a doubtful look.
“What?” Rolo said.
“She doesn’t quite fit what I remember walking around out here,” I said. “That’s all.”
Rolo laughed a little. “That’s no lie. True as a motherfucker.”
I didn’t reply.
After a moment, Rolo leaned forward a little and beckoned me to do the same. I leaned in. His strong, earthy cologne mingled with the alcohol on his breath.
“Last time you was here,” he said, “you made the mistake of underestimating me. You gonna do that again?”
Then he leaned back, smiled at me and polished off his drink. The slurping sound seemed loud in the place. Almost immediately, the bartender brought him another drink and took the empty glass away. Rolo didn’t acknowledge him or touch the drink, but continued to stare at me.
I was tired of this jousting. Now that I was pretty sure he didn’t intend me any harm, I just wanted to be rid of him. But the only way to get there was to forge ahead.
“So explain it to me,” I said.
Rolo nodded slowly. “Aw’right. Here it is.”
I took a drink of the beer and waited, listening.
“I got more going on than just this street action,” he told me. “Got myself what you might call an escort service. My bottom girl, Rhonda? I got her running four, five other girls outta an apartment up south. Real classy-like. Service them dudes who can’t or won’t be seen out here on Sprague Avenue.” He pointed at the picture in front of me. “She be one of them.”
“Who is she?”
“Name’s Monique. She’s Canadian. The French kind.” Rolo reached for his glass. “And somebody done fucked her up.”
“Someone hurt her?”
He nodded. “Yeah. And hard.”
“Is she all right?”
“No,” Rolo said. “She up at the hospital, tubes and shit coming out of her. She got beat something solid.”
“Who did it?”
Rolo gave me a disbelieving look. “You kidding me, right?”
I shook my head.
“You think if I knew who did it I’
d be talking to your white ass?”
Oh.
“Probably not,” I conceded.
“Definitely not,” Rolo said. He shook his head. “Maybe you ain’t as smart as I thought.”
“Definitely not,” I said, deadpan.
He looked at me for a moment, then burst out laughing. “I was right about you,” he said between chuckles, wagging his finger at me and shaking his head. “You maybe ain’t the biggest or the toughest cat around, but you got sand. I was right about that.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t reply.
Rolo took a drink, still laughing quietly to himself. When he put the drink down, he turned back to business. “I don’t know yet who put the boots to my girl. She in and out of being awake up at the hospital, so I can’t get nothing worth a damn out of her yet.”
“What about your madam? Rhonda?”
He nodded. “Yeah, she keep a list of who Monique be seeing. But there’s two problems with that.”
“What?”
Rolo held up a finger. “First problem is Monique didn’t get beat up on no date. She was off duty. You follow?”
“She wasn’t working.”
“Nope. But there ain’t no way this shit was random. Whoever hurt her did it because of her work or because of me. And I don’t like not knowing which one it was.”
I understood that perfectly. “What’s the second problem?”
Rolo scratched his beard again. “The thing is, if whoever did this is in the game, I can deal with that motherfucker. Maybe it be the bikers trying to stretch their territory or some young buck thinking it’s time to test me. That’s easy enough to fix. But if this comes from the folks on Monique’s list, that’s a different sort of situation.”
I thought about what the average client for Monique would look like. Most likely, it would be some white man in his fifties with at least upper middle class money to spend. I didn’t quite understand why Rolo would have any problems with a guy like that.
