Hammers and Nails

by Andrew Vaillencourt

  The heavyset man heaved a sigh, “I will be frank. What is the real prognosis vis-a-vis keeping this endeavor as a going concern in the future?”

  Wade smirked to himself, Still talking like this is a business venture, and not a gang of well-dressed criminals. Chump.

  The widow responded, and her tone was sharp, “The Combine has been an essential part of the New Boston economic machinery for close to eighty years. As bad as things look at the moment, abandoning the model will likely only make things worse.”

  Vasiley Raibokov interjected, “Then we need more Bosses, and we need a chairman who can hold them all together. I do not see this happening while Quinzy is still unstable and Dockside is under siege. We should also seriously consider re-taking Big Woo.”

  This drew a murmur from the group. The Loss of Big Woo to Billy McGinty’s Center Street Teamsters had been a massive financial blow. Subsequent attempts to retake it had proven too expensive to maintain, but the wound to their collective pride remained open and weeping.

  “Baby steps, crew,” Manson offered, “This is not the time to get ambitious. We’ll get the Woo and Dockside too, eventually. But Vasiley is dead right about settling Quinzy and getting a new chairman.”

  Carefully, Wade. This is the tricky bit...

  “I move that we focus on getting a new chairman up and running first. The crews will want to see real leadership. Never forget that we run rackets. Our employees aren’t like office workers, folks. We need to lead from the front, and we need to look strong as fuck, too. Otherwise the crews will flake on us when we need them.”

  He watched The Widow with a careful eye. He knew she wanted the chair, and it would surprise her to know he wanted her to have it. But if she realized that fact, she would suspect a trap.

  Because it totally is a trap, Wade conceded silently.

  “And who shall be our new Chairman?” The Widow kept her gaze even, betraying nothing.

  Silva gave the easy answer, “I nominate The Widow.”

  “I second,” said Liam MacCallum, the Boss of Southie.

  Wade had known Woke Fields and Southie would go to the Widow. He still held the Sprawl, so he also knew that Malldown and the Framinghammers would likely go his way. With Malldown missing its boss, their support would naturally fall to Manson, and where Malldown went, the Framinghammers always followed.

  Cambridge, Summertown, and the Old Fen Way relied on the industrial might of the Sprawl, but their obscene wealth made them want to lean toward the Widow who already held the Old Fen Way, anyway. If those territories voted with their brains, they probably would not support the Widow. But they voted with their hearts, and their biases drove them to support the rich woman.

  Wade had to lobby for the chair in a convincing manner, but not so well that he actually won the prize. If he was serious about taking the seat, he would lean on his crews’ advantages in both numbers and proficiencies. As a Boss who never got too far away from what it was to be a criminal, Wade’s crews were rougher, meaner, and more inclined to violent action than the money launderers and loan sharks that Silva had to work with. The Southie boys were tough as hell, but he had numbers and money on them. McCallum was old school though, and would bear watching because that was a man who would not run from a fight. Wade was heavy into extortion, drugs, smuggling, and other old, reliable, strong-arm rackets that never seemed to change. His boys were well armed, experienced, and positively ruthless. He could take any one of these crews in a straight fight, and the balancing influence of Richter had been the only thing keeping him in check. Richter had run his rackets the same way Manson did, and he was the only Boss Wade had reservations about taking head on.

  But Richter was gone, and he had a new partner to back his plays now. But instead of going for the throat, this partner had impressed upon Wade the need to just let the Combine fall. This meant that for the first time in ten years, he would not be vying for the top chair at all. Wade was going build a whole new table, instead.

  “Well imagine that,” he neither smiled nor frowned, “The Widow wants the big chair, huh? I suppose I could throw my hat in the ring, too, huh. You all know that I got the heaviest hitters, barring freelancers.”

  “The galaxy is filled with competent contractors if you have the money, Wade,” The Widow’s voice was frosty, her eyes narrow. She had that kind of money, and the implications of her statement were quite clear.

  “Don’t I know it,” Wade met the gaze with his own, “So I guess the game is this: Can my boys hold out against your contractors? Will you run out of money before I run out of hitters?”

  “That doesn’t have to be the way of it at all, Wade,” Silva interjected to keep the discussion civil, “None of us need an internal war to go along with the external. We will all lose no matter which of you wins.”

  “I guess there’s the rub then, eh?” Wade was enjoying himself, “Say I go along with this. Let’s just say I lay down and endorse the Widow for Chairwoman to avoid a nasty fight. My problem is that other folks, not privy to our little discussions, may see this as a sign of me being weak.” His lip curled, and he shook his head, “That’s the kind of thing what can hurt a guy’s credibility.”

  “A concession can be arranged,” The Widow offered, with just a little too much desperation in her clipped tone, “Perhaps a ceding of territory or something? Something big and public so that one might infer you have gotten over on me as much as I have you.”

  “I want the Woo.”

  Faces around the table went sour with confusion. Silva gave voice to what they were all thinking, “We do not currently possess Big Woo, Wade.”

  “But we will. More specifically, I will.” Wade stood to force the others to look up at him while he spoke, “I’m going to go after The Woo and take it back. But I don’t want any of you guys messing with me while I do it. When I take it back, it’s mine.”

  “You would be the Boss of two territories, then,” The Widow pointed out the obvious, “That is against the rules.”

  “Lady, we are crooks. Every one of us is a thief, a murderer, or a lying flesh-peddler. We are the purveyors of sin and misery, the merchants of menace.” A sick smile stretched his lips, “Don’t insult my intelligence or my profession by talking to me about rules.”

  There was a long pause. Every face at the table sat in impassive masks while the remaining Bosses pondered and calculated the possible outcomes of such an arrangement.

  The Widow, betraying her own eagerness, spoke first, “So, you would support me as chairwoman in exchange for granting you exclusive rights to Big Woo?”

  “Sure,” Wade needed a convincing reason for this to mask his greater plan, so he gave them the most convincing reason of all, “Big Woo is a huge profit center. I got into this game for the money, not fancy titles. You can be ‘Madame Chairwoman’ as long as I get to be rich as all hell while you do it.” He sat back down, “Those are my terms.”

  Silva played the part of mediator, “It’s unusual, but since we don’t actually hold the territory, I don’t see the problem, myself. It will be seen as an equitable bargain, and neither of you will look weak if this passes. I second Mr. Manson’s proposal.”

  Raibokov still needed convincing, “Even though it would give him two votes on the board and a disproportionate amount of territory?”

  “I can accept this, given that acquiring Big Woo and then holding it will probably consume so many resources that the actual balance of power will likely stay unchanged. Mr. Manson is gambling he can take and hold the Woo at a profit. I suspect it will be all he can do to break even. His proposal allows us to move forward without any loss of face or looking weak. It’s a good plan,” he dipped a respectful nod to Manson, “I am not afraid of Wade’s ambitions.”

  Raibokov grunted, “Hmph. Fine then. I will support this plan as well. If only to move us away from internal bickering. How does the Board vote?”

  At this point, the vote was just a formality. The misadventures of the previous sev
en months had reduced the former group of twelve to seven, and the surviving Bosses were all too happy to have a plan for moving forward that did not involve open warfare. Wade Manson sat back and let the other members assemble plans for settling the unrest around the Quinzy shipyards and discuss promising candidates for the missing territorial bosses. None of it interested him now that he had what he wanted. Namely, The Widow in the high seat where the crosshairs of his partner would be firmly affixed. His gambit for Big Woo was a ruse. Silva was dead right about what it would take to re-acquire and hold that turf. Breaking even would be the best possible outcome and losing his shirt was far more likely. But he had needed a concession big enough to keep face and keep people from wondering why he wasn’t after The Widow’s new position.

  Yes, Wade Manson had just played the whole Board like a fiddle, and it felt good. This new partner was shrewd and his plan was pure genius. Wade prepared himself mentally for the bright future ahead of him while he only half-listened to the banter going on around him.

  It would all be meaningless in just a few weeks, anyway.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The plan, if it could be called such, was simple enough.

  Reinhardt filed his grievance that afternoon at the New Boston Hunter’s Lodge, and Mindy endorsed it. This caused quite a buzz, as many of the hunters present had been unaware such a bounty had even existed, and most found it laughable that anyone would go after Dockside’s most famous fixer for such a measly sum. It had only been six or seven months since the multi-million-credit bounty on Lucia had run so many promising hunters afoul of Roland, and the surviving Lodge members remembered with terrified clarity how poorly their guild had fared against the big man.

  Reinhardt suffered mightily for the magnitude of his folly. His peers at the Lodge did not even bother to laugh at him, instead they just shook their heads in bewildered pity at his brazen stupidity. Reinhardt would have preferred to the mockery over the pity. One might laugh at the mistakes of an equal or perhaps a colleague, but one pitied a fool or a child. A quick check of the database indicated Wild Bill McClintock had filed a similar grievance when he returned to Wayfair. This was a welcome bit of corroboration and it eased Reinhardt’s embarrassment to know that someone else had been suckered as badly as he had. Wild Bill was no rookie, either. He had been around for a few years and should have known better. It was a small consolation, but it was a relief to be in good company all the same.

  Reinhardt’s humiliation was irrelevant to Roland, but he needed the bounty hunter’s cooperation to track down the person posting the bounties on his head. Mindy’s endorsement helped because her stature escalated a minor procedural matter into a whirling cyclone of rumor-mongering and wild speculation amongst the Lodges. Sure enough, less than two hours after filing the grievance, Mindy’s comm chirped, and she received a summons to see the New Boston Lodge’s steward along with Reinhardt.

  “Game’s afoot, kiddies,” Mindy announced when the call came through, “Time to set a trap!”

  They were at the office again, essentially sitting on their hands and waiting until the storm of scuttlebutt had reached critical mass. Reinhardt had agreed to cooperate for no other reason than he had no other way of getting at the jerk who had set him up. Watching Mindy made the time fly by though. He could have happily observed her go through the motions of her day for hours without getting bored. It was mostly the motions of it keeping his attention. The tiny woman moved like an exotic dancer and she was not shy about it. Her prodigious chest always seemed to be no more than a millimeter from tearing free from the simple white shirt that she kept open most of the way to her belly button. The universe had had no love for Steven Reinhardt because it never did, but he watched like a hawk just in case. He was aware that Mindy had caught him looking, but he didn’t care. If Mindy didn’t want people to look at her tits, she could button her shirt, he figured. So, he did his level best to get an eyeful and didn’t worry too much about any issues she might have with it.

  But the call from the steward arrived and ended their little game. Roland started barking orders.

  “All right Reinhardt,” he boomed, “you’re up.”

  Reinhardt scowled back, “yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what I’m doing.”

  “If that was true, you’d have never taken the job,” Roland had still not let the hunter off the hook for trying to kill him.

  “Settle down, boys,” Lucia interrupted the before a fight broke out, “We talked about this, Roland. Let it go.”

  “Yeah, Roland,” Reinhardt sneered, “Let it go.”

  Mindy sighed and kicked Reinhardt’s legs out from underneath him. The Bounty hunter crashed to the carpet with a floor-shaking thud, and Mindy had a long black blade against his throat faster than the eye could follow. To see the towering hunter brought low and subdued by the diminutive blond was comical enough that even Roland’s grouchy face twisted with suppressed laughter.

  “Steven,” Mindy said, her voice even and patient, “Lucia and I have worked very hard to get Roland to a place where he doesn’t just kill everyone who pisses him off. He ain’t there yet, though, and you are not helping. If you keep waving your dick at him...” the knife rose a few inches away from his throat, and suddenly a crackling hum filled the room. Reinhardt felt a wave of intense heat from the blade and smelled the faint aroma of ozone.

  “... I’m going to cut it off.” The blade whooshed over his face and sliced cleanly through the main column of a nearby office chair. The top of the chair toppled over sideways to land next to Reinhardt’s face. Smoke wafted from the severed stump, still attached to the base.

  For the second time that day, Reinhardt made a mental note to learn when to shut his goddamn mouth. He had been staring at Mindy all afternoon and he had never even noticed she had an eighteen-inch dagger on her person, let alone one that cut through steel like it was cobwebs. He supposed if he had stopped trying to look down her shirt for a minute or two he might have noticed the weapon, but it was too late to correct that now.

  “Reinhardt,” Roland snickered, “you really need to understand something. You are not out on some frontier station where some expensive body-mods make you kind of big deal. You are in the thickest, nastiest, deepest pond imaginable. I’ve put ten punks like you down before breakfast on a bad day. I could kill you while holding my morning mocha and not spill a drop. But if Mindy says we can use you,” he gave an affable shrug, “then you are useful. So make fun of me, act like a big man, whatever you want. As long as the mission gets completed, I don’t care. But if you have not grasped the severity of your circumstances by now then I won’t be responsible for what happens to you. My advice, Steve, is for you to stop worrying about Mindy’s boobs, your humiliating fuck-ups, or whether or not anyone will find out how scared you really are. None of it matters. Somebody tried to trick you into getting yourself killed today, boy. If you really want a crack at that guy, then you need to quit waving your dick around and get your fucking head in the game.”

  Reinhardt sighed, “Fine. Sorry. It’s been a real shitty day. I’m a dick. Whatever. Let’s just do this.”

  “Good boy,” Mindy quipped, and the dagger went silent.

  Lucia looked bored, “We good, folks? All you bionic badasses finished beating each other up?”

  “Yes, dear,” Roland nodded.

  “Sure thing, Boss,” Mindy added.

  “Whatever you say, lady,” Reinhardt grumbled as he rose.

  “Good,” the brunette said, “Because this is the last time I’m going to hold Roland’s leash, Steve. Do your part and go away. Or, if you want another shot at him, take it. I don’t care. But do it after we are done.” She did not wait for his response because she did not care what it was. “Mindy and Steve, you go work the steward. Roland and I will go see Billy about exerting pressure from the other guilds.”

  With that, the two teams split up and left the office. Steve and Mindy went for the Lodge over in The Sprawl while Roland and Lucia pinged for a rid
e to Big Woo. Getting an aerocar for Roland was always an interesting prospect. His weight meant the usual micro-sized driverless models were a non-starter. Even if he could cram his enormous bulk into the cabin, their undersized gravitic actuators could never generate enough antigravitons to overcome his mass. This meant he was usually stuck riding in the back of a cargo model and thus billed for both distance and freight weight. Lucia’s administration of his business affairs had done a remarkable job of reducing his financial woes, but money was money and he hated paying three to five times as much as other people for a damn cab ride.

  True to form, the pair had to wait thirty minutes for a vehicle with sufficient power to respond. Roland sighed and took his customary position in the cargo area, grumbling all the while in response to Lucia’s good-natured ribbing over his bulk.

  The car was barely large enough, and the tortured whine of strained gravitics sang a dirge of pain into Roland’s ears, promising an eventful ride to their destination. The car wobbled off the street and lurched reluctantly into the air with a few precarious swoops while the autopilot adjusted for his weight and inertial mass. It would only be a fifteen-minute ride to The Woo, but thirty seconds into the trip and Roland was already thankful for the nano-machines that prevented him from getting motion sickness. He could hear Lucia’s muffled protestations through the partition as the machine screamed and wailed its way to cruising altitude and pointed itself south and west. Roland was certain that there would be no tip for this ride. He smiled in the dark privacy of the cargo area at this.