I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

5.

I lay in bed smoking, which they tell you not to do, but they also tell you not to drink liquor, not to eat red meat, and not to gamble, have sex, or dance on Sundays, so fuck ’em. I’d taken off my shirt to keep from wrinkling it, and lay against piled-up pillows with my shoes and pants on in just my undershirt. The apartment was hot from the steam heat and I was sweating there despite the cold wind coming in from the window.

I was running the events of the last few days over in my mind. Falken, dead. Rusch from fucking Jersey. A limo stolen thirty fucking years ago. And me, suddenly and officially, owing Frank McKenna a boatload of money, because Falken, poor dead Falken who’d been nursing a hangover in McHales just a few days ago, had skipped and that was on me.

There was a knock at the front door. I frowned and didn’t move for a moment, cigarette burning in my hand. It was a sixth floor walkup in an old building, it was quiet, stuffy, and I had an easy way out the bedroom window, up the ladder to the roof, across six buildings with easy jumps, and down the fire escape to the street. I glanced that way, watching the yellowed drapes blow in for a few seconds, and when another knock came I sat up, snuffing my cigarette in the crowded ashtray as I stood.

Passing through the living room, they knocked again, harder and more rapidly, making the door jump. The kitchen was dark and I left it that way as I crossed to the door; the hallway would be dim and there was no reason to light myself up. I paused just inside the door as they pounded again. I squinted through the peephole and saw two men: One a round, big black kid with a dopey smile on his fat face, the other taller, skinnier, with a big bushy mustache like a caterpillar sitting on his upper lip. The black kid was wearing baggy jeans and a dark T-shirt, lots of gold chains hanging off his neck that I was pretty sure would turn his skin green soon enough. The other guy was wearing a black suit, all attitude, but he pulled it off. Black shirt, black tie, black pants, black jacket. He had the shoulders and posture to make it work.

As he reared back for another pound, I opened the door and stepped into the doorway, leaning against the jam and pulling my pack of cigarettes out.

“Evening, Miggsy,” I said. “Selling Girl Scout Cookies?”

Miggs settled himself, folding his hands in front of him. The kid kept smiling like something was tickling his ass. I thought about asking Miggs about his taste in muscle, but thought better of it. Miggs didn’t look like he was in the mood to kid around. He was a little older than me, and worked Frank’s lesser debts, but he was steady.

He pulled a toothpick from his mouth and shrugged. “You buying Girl Scout cookies? You buyin’ ’em, I’ll find some to sell ya.”

With the pleasantries over, I lit a match and sucked in smoke. “What can I do for you, Miggs?”

He winced a little, looking a little embarrassed. “Frank put Falken’s debt on you today, kid.”

I studied him. “And, what, you couldn’t wait to come down here and break my balls about it?”

He shrugged, not looking embarrassed any more. “It’s a lot of money.” He twisted his head until his neck popped, loud, like a gunshot. “You got the two weeks? Maybe the whole thing?”

I smiled, a golden ball forming in the pit of stomach. My heart started pounding, and I felt adrenaline and power pouring into my limbs, everything loosening up. I looked at the Smiler and then back at Miggs, who stood there with the easy posture of a man used to violence. He understood the equation.

I thought, for a second, of the money under my closet floor, and then pushed the thought aside. The easy thing to do would be to hand over every fucking dime I had to Frank McKenna and hope I found Falken and twisted the money out of him, that would let me get back to work, back to normal. It would save me money in the long run, too, because Frank was going to pile on juice to the debt every week no matter what I did.

I shook my head. “Go fuck yourself, Miggs. Tell Frank he wants his money, he can come here like a man and ask me nicely.”

It was hard to keep the smile off my face. Not only was this allowed, not only was this fucking okay, but Miggs was a man who could handle himself, and would give as good as he got. This was going to be fun.

He got sulky, frowning and letting his hands hang free in preparation. “Just business. No need to get sticky about it.”

I exhaled smoke and flicked my cigarette away. “Sticky? Fuck you, sticky. I own this debt for three goddamn hours you’re here like a fucking roach to see what might fall out of my ass as I walk around?” I stepped forward, into the hall, crowding them, the narrow, shadowy stairs a few feet behind Miggs to his right. “You know what you just did?”

Miggs didn’t back away, just narrowed his eyes. His mustache was fucking majestic, with a healthy sheen, thick and glorious. “What?”

“You just gave me permission,” I said, and jerked forward, smacking my forehead into his nose.

He took it well, staggering backwards a step or two with a grunt and then putting his head down, meeting my rush with his shoulders, grappling my waist with his big arms. I pushed him into the railing at the top of the stairs, making it creak and lean outward dangerously, then sprang back half a step and clocked him nice and solid on the chin, spinning him onto the wobbly railing with his ass pointed at me.

He took hold of the railing and kicked, catching me in the stomach with a shot that felt like lead, knocking the breath out of me. I tried to laugh, uncontrollably, my whole body clenching and shuddering painfully as it tried to vomit up guffaws. Spots danced in front of me as my lungs burned.

He spun around and saw me just swaying there, shaking, and lunged forward with a haymaker. I ducked, easy, and he smacked his fist into the wall, old lathing and plaster that didn’t even crack. He howled and danced back, clutching his fist, and I managed one wet, coughing breath as I reached out and grabbed onto one of his ankles, giving it a yank with my knees planted firmly on the floor. He toppled over and hit the floor with a crash, making all the boards jump, and I leaped atop him, smacking my fist down into his face, angels singing, the white light everywhere, truly happy for the first time all day. I was working his face, like an artist works clay, re-arranging it and putting my stamp on it. It was what I’d been put on the earth to do.

I sat up suddenly, panting, my chest tight and feeling like someone had pushed splinters into my lungs. Miggs lay there moaning, his nose and mouth bloody and soft, his face already swollen. I looked up, feeling my shirt clinging damply to my torso, and found the Smiling Fool still just standing there. He wasn’t smiling any more; his face was concentric circles of fucked-up shock.

“You’re the worst,” I managed between heaves, “fucking muscle … I ever saw.” I gestured down at poor Miggs, for whom I was already feeling sorry. “Why didn’t … you jump in?”

He looked at me and blinked. “Shit, he didn’t tell me to.”

I nodded. “You and the fucking Bumble ought to form a club.” I pushed myself up to my feet and pointed at him. “Stay here.”

I staggered back into my apartment, blowing like a beached whale, and grabbed my shirt and overcoat from the bedroom, then went back into the hall, where Miggs had rolled himself onto his belly and had pulled himself a few inches towards the stairs. I shut and locked the door behind me and fished for my cigarettes again. Stepping over Miggs with a cigarette in my mouth, I glanced back at the Smiler and pointed at Miggs.

“Don’t help him,” I said. “Make him crawl down.”

The streets were empty and the cab dumped me outside The Oak Room off of Central Park in about half an hour. My chest still felt like I’d strained some fundamental muscle and stabbed me every time I moved, but I’d stopped panting and trembling. I’d smoked three cigarettes along the way and discovered four open cuts oozing blood on my face, but felt fantastic. I needed to get into fistfights more often. The problem with the people I worked with was their disappointing tendency to pull a gun on you if you pushed them too far.

I paid the driver a fifty and told him to keep it, and pushed my way past the flunkies at the front and stood in the dining room a moment. I saw Frank just as his mopes did, and they rushed forward to meet me when I was still a few steps away from his table, where he was eating alone. They were just two kids, fat assholes who had all the imagination of the cheap suits they were sausaged into.

“Touch me and I’ll break both hands so bad you’ll never be able to jerk off again,” I said, putting another cigarette in my mouth. Bad for me, but so was getting into fights outside your own fucking apartment. I looked past them to where Frank sat leaning back in his chair, napkin tucked into his collar, studying me with a grin on his face. “You seriously want a scene, Frank?”

He shrugged. “I can cover the damages. And I can get ten more guys in here in thirty seconds.”

My heart leaped in instinctive joy. I smiled. “Do it.”

Frank studied me again, then leaned forward to his plate again, shaking his head. “Fucking crazy bastard. Let him come.”

The mopes stepped aside, shooting their cuffs and giving me their best hardcase looks, and I pushed past them and dropped into the chair opposite Frank, lighting up. I stared at him until he looked up from his steak dinner. He blinked and leaned back again.

“Jesus, you look like hell. You want somethin’? Hey, Ginny, get him a bourbon,” he said, waving his hand in the air randomly. “Get him a Wild Turkey, neat.” He looked back at me and spread his arms. “What?”

I waited a moment, then leaned forward, pushing smoke out through my nose. “Your cash flow drying up, Frank? That why you sent that fucking grocery clerk to try and collect on me?”

He popped his eyes at me. “Send him? Send who?”

I controlled myself with effort. I felt so good I wanted to leap across the table and keep my adrenaline up. “Miggs. Miggs Bender.”

Frank smirked. “That moron. Look, you inherited a debt. You inherit the juice on it too, and you don’t get a reprieve just because it’s got a new owner.” Someone crept up behind me and placed a nearly-full tumbler of whiskey on the table in front of me. Frank shrugged. “I didn’t send anyone after you. But you can’t be surprised. Miggs has got you on his list now. He don’t get you to pay, he’s in dutch, right? So he’s just bein’ enterprising.”

I leaned back and picked up the tumbler with my bandaged, aching hand, crossing my legs and pursing my lips. It could be, I figured. Miggs was greedy and ambitious like everyone else, and he maybe just thought he might find me soft. I sniffed the whiskey and took a gulp. “All right,” I said. “Maybe.”

Frank nodded and picked up his knife and fork, bending over the plate. “Besides, you bring it on yourself. You earn good, kid. You don’t bet, you don’t spend. The fuck you do with all your money, who knows? So it’s natural to think that you’ve got a nut hidden away, that you could clean up a debt like that easy.”

I stared down into my drink, going calm and still, knowing the truth: I’d been chucked over the side for money. It was a big nut, sure, but nothing compared to what Frank McKenna pulled in every day. But he figured I had money stashed somewhere and he’d let Miggsy come at me hoping to break something loose. I took a deep breath and bolted the glass of whiskey, forcing it down and sitting for a moment, making sure it stayed down.

“I’ll handle it,” I said. “No need to send fucking poodles to bite my ankles, okay?”

I stood up, but Frank reached out and put a hand on my arm, making me pause. “Listen,” he said, letting his hand slide off me and picking up his fork again. “No hard feelings. You pay off the debt, all is forgiven, everyone’s friends.”

I nodded. “Yeah, okay.” I wanted to smash the tumbler into his head, make him bleed.

He nodded without looking up. “Until then, Billy’s gonna stick closer than usual. No offense.”

“Fuck you, no offense.” I took a few steps away, then paused. Without turning back to him, I said “Fine. Tell Bill to pick me up tomorrow around nine. We’re taking a trip.”

“A trip? Where to?”

I grimaced as I pushed my way through the mopes again, giving them both some shoulder. “Fucking Jersey.”

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I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

4.

We sat, The Bumble and me, in the waiting room, on the little plastic seats bolted to the wall. I sat in continuous fear that the seat might collapse under The Bumble’s bulk; a catastrophe like that would ruin the impression of blank menace The Bumble usually projected. The receptionist sat behind her cheap metal desk tapping dolefully at a keyboard, stealing glances at us. She was middle-aged and matronly, with no discernible figure, wearing a floral sack of a dress and big round glasses with bright red frames she probably thought were daring. She didn’t like us sitting in the waiting room, but I’d made an appointment and this flustered her.

For his part, The Bumble was glad to be back on rounds. He didn’t like uncertainty and breaks in our routine. He appeared to doze next to me, eyes half-closed, at peace.

The waiting room was just bare drywall painted an unenthusiastic shade of off-white; you could still see the tape on the seams. A single, gloriously terrible painting, huge, had been hung behind us on the wall, stretching the length of the bolted-on seats, and a tall potted fake plant a shade of green that was almost, but not quite found in nature squatted in the corner behind the receptionist. That was it for decoration, aside from the jerkoff’s law degree in a frame on the wall over her desk. There was no music, no magazines, and no conversation with a pretty thing—this was, I decided, the worst Reception Area I’d ever been in.

Rounds were tedious, most days. Most people paid up, making ninety percent of my job just a long boring errand. Even the ones who tried to get cute usually never pushed me to the point where I gave myself permission to have some fun, so the whole fucking day was usually me, blue-balled, reduced to glowering and making threats. I went home at night pissed off and grouchy, fantasizing about getting a real fight, someone my size with some training, some passion, who would simultaneously owe Frank McKenna money and be ready for me. It didn’t happen often.

Then, there were days like this, where one name glowed hot and red on my list, a punk who was three weeks behind and thought he could get away with it. I wore my best suit, double-breasted and formal.

Something buzzed on the desk, and the Receptionist heaved herself forward to mash a finger. “Yes?”

“Send in my three-o’clock, Gladys.”

Gladys. I smirked. Sometimes parents had a supernatural sense of exactly what their kid was going to be. I stood up, and The Bumble snorted and startled upwards.

“You can—”

I waved a gloved hand at her as we headed for the office. It was silly, maybe, to sit and wait for an appointment, but I liked the idea. I pictured Mr. Lawrence Teller, esq., in his office, having an afternoon cocktail and scrolling porn on his computer, thinking there was business in his lobby, happy and calm. And then we walk in. Keeping your subjects off-balance was a big part of the job.

I turned the knob and stepped into the office, The Bumble behind me like a ghost. The office was exactly the same as the reception area, just smaller. The walls looked like props, the carpet was stained and worn down to a theoretical layer of shag, and the desk was exactly the same sort of remnant bought from the back of a truck. Our guy was sitting ramrod straight, a big smile on his face, fat in a too-tight shirt, his tie knotted a bit too high up, sitting on his belly like a dead fish. He had a wide, florid face, perpetually pink, and a long nose, a mop of happy brown curls on his head. He would have been kind of good-looking when he’d been young.

Again, there was just one piece of decoration on the wall, this one right behind the desk, up a little too high. The frame was just barely not big enough to totally obscure the fact that something was set into the wall behind it.

“Mr.,” he glanced down at his desk, “Smith.” He heaved himself up and extended a hand. “How are you today, sir?”

I paused in front of the desk while The Bumble circled around behind him. I stared at him and made no move to take his hand. “Mr. Teller,” I said, pursing my lips. “You’re a fucking deadbeat.”

He let his hand drop and glanced nervously around at The Bumble, then back at me, trying to frown all stern-like. “Who are you?”

“I’m Frank McKenna’s nephew,” I said. “You owe him fifteen thousand dollars with interest due every week, and you’re three fucking weeks late.” I smiled. “As a service to our professional white-collar clients who maybe don’t have time in their busy days to troop downtown to make a payment, I show up and pick it up for ’em.” I nodded. “So let’s have it.”

That was my due diligence. I eyed Teller clinically, looking for soft spots, places he would hurt best. He was all soft spot, as far as I could tell, one big bruise waiting to happen. He looked like a guy who wore slippers in the house to spare his tender feet. Electricity buzzed through me. I was going to get the chance to beat the tar out of this bastard, and it would be entirely justified.

He smiled, looking at The Bumble and then back at me. “Ah, I see. Gentlemen,” he indicated the two dusty-looking chairs opposite his desk. “Have a seat. Let’s discuss the circumstances.”

I nodded. “Do you have the money?”

He shrugged. “I’m afraid not.”

I looked at The Bumble and made my face into an O of shock. “Hot Christ, he doesn’t have it, Billy. What the hell do we do now?”

“My secretary has already called the police,” Teller said calmly, sitting down in his big leather rolling chair and sweeping his hand towards his guest seats. “Let’s give up the tough guy routine and come to some terms—a payment plan. I fully intend—”

Joyfully, I leaned forward and punched him in the nose.

I didn’t have much leverage; I sent him rolling back into the wall behind him, made him yelp and throw his hands up to his face, but there was no satisfying crunch of broken cartilage. Grinning, I leaped up on top of his desk as The Bumble caught hold of his chair and sent him rocketing back towards me. I set my weight and lashed one foot at him, a steel toe smacking into his hands and sending him and the chair ass over tits. I jumped down on top of him, barking my shins on the chair’s arms as I got a knee on his throat, making him shoot his hands from his crushed nose down to my leg, where they grabbed on, sticky with blood, and feebly tried to push me away.

I felt light. I felt like I was weightless, floating, and everything around me was just made of sand: moldable.

“I don’t give a shit about police, Mr. Teller,” I said gaily, raising one fist and just letting it hang there in the air. I could hold it there forever, for centuries, without getting tired. Power coursed through me, golden and liquid. “I’ve spent plenty of nights in holding cells, and I’m not a fucking lawyer like you but I’ve got lawyers who make, apparently a lot more fucking money than you do.” I feinted my fist down at his face, making him twitch and yelp again, spitting up bubbly blood. “Since you called this in, we’ve got about ten minutes. Ten minutes we can spend either beating you to a fucking raw pulp, or gathering cash from your fucking wall safe.”

He was moving his mouth, a grotesque, slithery sight. After a moment I realize I was putting too much weight on his neck and he couldn’t breathe. I let up half an inch and he sucked in a damp, bloody breath. His nose pulsed like a swamp every time he breathed.

“Don’t have … don’t—”

I leaned down a little. “Shhh, now, shhh. You don’t have it all, huh? That’s okay. You got at least a week’s interest?”

He nodded miserably, and I smiled. “All right. That’ll buy you one more week. Ups-a-daisy.”

I sprang up off him and held one gloved hand down to him. Slowly, panting hard, he took hold and let me pull him up. The Bumble took his cue and snatched the painting off the wall, revealing a pretty sad-looking wall safe embedded roughly into the wall. The Bumble tossed the painting aside savagely, smashing it against the far wall, and I leaned over and smoothed Teller’s bloody shirt against his paunch, adjusted his collar. His nose was flat and leaking blood, and his eyes had already darkened to black circles.

“You’re fine,” I said heartily, still high, feeling powerful and happy. I gave him a friendly slap to the cheek and indicated the safe. “Have at it.”

Back out in the lobby, the receptionist watched us emerge from the office with wide, frightened eyes. I winked, stuffing the large bills into my envelope.

“You really call the cops?”

She nodded, slowly, tracking us as we passed her.

“Tell ’em you were robbed,” I said as The Bumble called for the elevator. We stepped into the cab and let the doors slide shut. I looked at myself in the shiny, scratched steel and couldn’t see any bloodstains. I handed the envelope to The Bumble.

“Do me a favor,” I said. “Hand this in for me.”

He took the envelope, stared at it for a moment, then looked at me. “Where you going?”

“To the library.”

I watched her from across the huge room for a few minutes. For a library reading room it felt noisy, even though there wasn’t much sound at all—but the sound there was felt layered and deep. Big wooden tables filled the floor, the walls two stories high covered in bookshelves. At the far end was a row of windows like in a bank—Teller’s windows—but these handed out books. You filled out a form and handed it in, a few minutes later someone brought the books up and slid them across to you. Every few minutes I saw her: Beautiful brunette, her long hair pulled back into a silky pony tail, all curves in her ankle-length skirt and cardigan, smartassed glasses on the tip of her nose. She was beautiful, she was young, she was fucking brilliant, and she chose to work in the goddamn library.

I smiled as I walked up the wide center aisle, feeling noisy.

The place was pretty filled; you kept hearing about how no one read any more, how everything was going to the dogs, but here we were in the fucking library and it was packed. Most people were slobs, though, dressed like they were in someone’s living room having a beer, watching the game. People didn’t know how to fucking dress any more; they wore whatever they found on the floor when they woke up.

She saw me as she brought a stack of books up to one of the windows, and looked over the head of the tiny old man who collected them, staring at me with a half smile on her lips. She turned and said something to the people working with her and when I stepped up to the window she turned and smiled at me.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite Uncle who isn’t my uncle,” she said. “How have you been, Unc?”

“Alive,” I said. “How are you, Rache? Got a minute?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Sure. Come on back.”

I stepped over to the heavy door on the side of the windows and a moment later she opened it and passed me through. I followed her back to a tiny office, keeping my eyes off her ass, and ignored the looks from everyone we walk past. She dropped into the squeaking chair behind a pile of paper in the general shape of a desk a computer screen poking out from one end and glowing ominously. I barely had space to leaned against the wall across from her. I put my hands in my pockets for safe keeping. The office smelled like her, some flowery perfume.

She leaned back, her straining cardigan somehow worse than if she were naked. “Been a while.”

I nodded. “I figured you’d let me know if my company was ever wanted again.”

“Have I been sleepwalking again? Dropping postcards in the mail in the middle of the night?”

Looking down at the floor, I shook my head. “No. I came to ask a favor.”

She didn’t say anything. When I looked back up, she was chewing on her glasses and studying me, cool and collected. After a moment, she nodded. “Okes, maybe. Depending on what you need. For old time’s sake.”

I nodded, pulling a slip of paper from my pocket and handing it over the desk to her. “Two names.”

She smiled, taking the paper. I imagined a spark of static electricity as our fingers almost touched, but it was probably just the dry office air. She looked at the two names and quick bullet lists of information I’d printed on it. “They have this thing now called the Internet, you know.”

I shook my head. “Too random. I could spend all day running down bullshit. You’re good at this shit, Rachel.”

She looked back at me, raising one eyebrow. She’d always been a cool kid: She never laughed or reacted unless she wanted to, and getting her to react had always been a thrill for me. Finally she stood up, graceful.

“All right. Wait in here. Don’t step outside this office, and if anyone says anything to you, you’re mute. Got it?”

I smiled. “Can I make one of those signs begging for money because I can’t speak?”

She turned and walked out of the office, but I was pretty sure I’d made her laugh. As a reward I watched her ass as she walked away.

When she came back about half an hour later, I was still standing there where she’d left me. She had a bunch of papers in one hand and paused in the doorway, squinting at me, as if she thought maybe I’d rifled her desk while she’d been gone. But she’d know that was ridiculous—I played by the rules.

“All right,” she said, breezing in, sassy. She dropped back into her chair and held onto the paper for a moment. “You gonna break their legs or something?”

I shrugged. “One, maybe. The other put me through some trouble,” I touched the bandage on my forehead, “and I just want to find out why before she shows up again.” I decided not to mention that each one had pulled a disappearing act on me.

She studied me again, fanning herself with the paper. “All right,” she said finally. “First, Rusch. I found three women who fit the general data you gave me.” She leaned forward and handed me three sheets of heavy photo paper. The second one was a good crisp picture of the Doctor, without her thick glasses. She was smiling and looked a little younger, but it was her. I handed that one back. “That’s one.”

She nodded, glancing down. “That one’s down at Rutgers University in Jersey. Physics Department. Published a lot up until about a decade ago, then dropped off the scene and if she wasn’t tenured probably would have been let go.” She shrugged and handed over a single sheet of copy paper, several bullet points and paragraphs of information, including a phone number and address. I smiled and folded it up.

“You’re a goddamn angel, you know that?”

She looked up at me from under her eyebrows. “And you’re a violent asshole, you know that?”

I stiffened and looked away. She would tear like paper. I swallowed a surge of adrenaline, imagining, for one quick, dirty moment how she would just disintegrate in my hands, like tissue. Then I forced a smile onto my face and locked down my breathing, forcing steady, deep breaths. “You wouldn’t know, Rache,” I said. “Remember that, okay?”

We held each other’s eyes for a moment, and then she looked back down at the last bit of paper in her hand. “There’s only one Elias Falken who fits your description that I can find. Which is too bad for you.” She leaned forward, giving me a view of her neck as she handed the page over.

“Why’s that?” I said, glancing down. The photo was exactly right: Falken smiled back at me in what looked like a Driver’s License shot.

She finally gave me a full-on smile, her whole face lighting up as she cocked her head, eyes shining. “Because he’s been dead for two years.”

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I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

3.

“Where are you headed?” White Suit asked. “We can drop you.”

I was crowded between the two big guys in the back of the limo. It was old-school, the limo; big and chrome-laden, an old car but in fantastic shape, the leather seats supple and soft. White Suit and the Ginger were seated across from us, a little more comfortable. I kept my hands in my lap and a smile on my face.

“The Porterhouse,” I said. “Columbus Circle. Steak and a whiskey. Good chopped salads. But I have my own driver—he gets emotional if I leave him in the car too long. And I should have cracked the window.”

White Suit smiled. “Do not pretend you do not know your driver is following us at a discrete three-car distance.” She nodded. “We’ll drive you there, and have a conversation.” She held up her hand to forestall an interruption I wasn’t going to give. “Just a conversation.”

I shrugged as the limo pulled into traffic. “All right.”

We all stared at each other for a few moments. It was cold in the limo, the crank air pouring in through a million tiny vents.

“You are searching for a man named Falken,” White Suit suddenly said.

I stared back at her and said nothing, and she smiled.

“The silent treatment?”

I shrugged again. “We ain’t been introduced.”

She smiled. “I see. My name is Cornelia Rusch. Doctor Cornelia Rusch.”

Awkwardly, she leaned forward, extending her hand. I stared down at it for a moment, and then looked back at her. I lifted my head and sniffed the air, turning right and left, then leaning down to smell the big guy on my right. He smelled like aftershave. A lot of fucking aftershave.

“You don’t smell like cops,” I said, straightening up. “And I don’t recall too many doctors working a shield anyway. So who the fuck are you?”

Rusch seemed amused by this. “Police!” She said with an odd upturn on the pitch at the end. “He wonders if we are police. No,” she sobered instantly, looking at me seriously. “We are not police. We do not, in fact, have any authority at all in this. . .locality.”

“All right,” I said, looking at Ginger. She wasn’t pretty.

Silence hung between us again. I sighed.

“Look, you snatched me. You want a conversation, you’re going to have to supply it.”

She smiled and nodded. “Ah! Yes! Yes!” she clapped his hands and looked around. Her three employees were the worst audience ever; they didn’t even pretend to give a shit, and I was momentarily glad that she at least didn’t go for the dry-heave high-five. Lowering her arm, she beamed at me, unconcerned. “You are searching for this man Falken. I also seek an audience with him.” She spread her hands. “I am merely proposing cooperation.”

I nodded, and stared back at her. After another moment, she sighed.

“I do not care about the sum of money Mr. Falken owes. You are welcome to it, and I hope you recover it. If I can assist you in recovering it, I will gladly do so.”

She grinned at me. After a moment I realized she thought this was enough to get me talking.

She blinked. She’d switched her sunglasses for a pair of thick prescriptions in the same frame, her eyes swimming huge and bleary behind the epic lenses. Time was slowed down by those lenses, every blink taking an extra second to get to me, occurring in the past.

“So,” she said, sounding suddenly unsure of herself. “Since we both seek Falken, I am suggesting we pool our resources. Share information. I want Falken himself—his physical being. You wish only his funds. Therefore we are not at cross-purposes, and could benefit from combined strategy.”

I nodded and sat forward, jostled slightly by the smooth motion of the limo through the streets, zooming uptown on Third Avenue. “Is that it? That the pitch?”

She blinked again, Morse code from the future. “Well,” she said, twiddling her fingers. “Well.”

I gave her another few seconds, puzzling it out. She had muscle. Three heavy hands with barkers crowding their armpits didn’t make an empire, but it was muscle. She had money. Not cops, but Feds, I wondered, or some agency maybe you didn’t hear about too often. Or just someone with money who had a hard-on for Falken, although you didn’t meet too many independently wealthy assholes who had time for shit like this—they had lawyers for shit like this. I turned and looked out the tinted window, watching the Mercedes containing The Bumble suddenly accelerate past us, and then leaned forward and smiled at Rusch again.

“Then listen: I don’t give a fuck why you want Falken. I don’t care to have terms dictated to me. When I find that motherfucker, I will need use of his physical being in order to extract my money from him, follow? When I’m done with him, if there’s much of him left, you can scrape him up and do whatever you want with him, because I won’t care any more. Until then, you better put on your fucking seatbelts.”

Rusch blinked again. “What?”

The Mercedes swooped into the lane in front of us and the brake lights came on red and angry as The Bumble shuddered to a sudden stop. The limo swerved and braked, spinning and slamming into the trunk of the Mercedes, sending us all tumbling violently around the back, smacking into each other. I hit my head on something that didn’t like me, and everything went gray and woozy for a moment. A piercing, painfully loud noise erupted in my ears, a harsh buzzing that grew and grew until I wanted to twitch and shake and bang my head against concrete to make it stop.

And then, it stopped.

I realized I was on my back on the floor of the limo, the stink of spilled liquor everywhere, and when I pushed myself up my left hand found broken glass that sliced in, sending a burning spike of pain up my arm, which I ignored.

I blinked, something wet and burning in my eyes. I looked around. Aside from me, the limo was empty. Everyone else had disappeared.

I stared down at the Ribeye and my double bourbon. Bourbon was a good, steady drink when your heart was pounding and your head aching; bourbon was basically moonshine allowed to age and thus was all natural and unfussy. When my stomach felt tender I went with good old American bourbon instead of Scotch. I was on my third, double neat, and hadn’t touched my steak.

Sitting at the bar at The Porterhouse, I felt confused and burned cigarettes one after the other, forgetting to smoke them. They’d tried to ban smoking indoors a few years ago, but cooler heads had prevailed. The noise of the restaurant and bar was subdued and mellow, just people having conversations. The bartender was a sweet young girl in black pants and a white shirt, her blond hair up in a bouncy ponytail, and most nights when she was working I tried flirting with her, just for the hell of it. Tonight I didn’t have the mental energy and it worried her. The gash on my head and the bandage damp with blood on my hand might not be helping either.

On the other end of the bar, The Bumble sat with a newspaper, pretending he could read and glancing up at me from time to time, his face blank. I kept buying the impassive bastard drinks—he was, I knew, partial to Gimlets—but he hadn’t touched them, all three just sitting there, sweating and wet. The Bumble didn’t drink when he deemed himself to be on duty.

A tall black man in a really good suit, carrying a really nice black overcoat over one arm, stepped into the bar area behind The Bumble, who spied him in the mirror and nodded, once, politely. Detective James made a gun out of his massive hand and fired at The Bumble, once, grinning. James found The Bumble amusing, and so far had not had any occasion to be disabused of the notion. I watched him walk over to me in the mirror, his alternate self grinning as he slid into the stool next to me, the massive gold watch on his wrist glinting in the light, his diamond rings glittering like tiny flash bulbs. His tiepin, I noted, was a big ruby, somehow not gauche or oversize on him. It was probably because Detective James was the size of three men forced into the same suit.

“Thought I’d find you here,” he rumbled as he leaned towards the bartender. “Hello, sweetheart. You’re getting better-looking every time I come in here. Still not dating brothers?”

The blond, whose name I never learned on purpose, kept her face blank. “I date lots of brothers,” she said archly. “I don’t date cops.”

He grinned, his teeth perfect, white and straight. “All right, then. A Coors.” He turned back to me, still grinning. “The fucking Banquet Beer, eh?”

I shrugged. Coors had tasted like dirty water a hundred years ago, and it tasted like dirty water today.

“Shit, you look like hell,” he said, folding those shovels in his lap. “Crawl out of any limousines lately?”

I shut my eyes. “Shit.”

“Someone noticed your plates as you fled the scene of an accident. I got a flag on that plate. I like to keep an eye on you. So you’re lucky; I quashed the note for now. Thought I’d see what was going on.”

I nodded. Detective Stanley James, called The Executioner by his admirers due to an unfortunate shooting record, was the smartest fucking cop I knew. He wasn’t adverse to bribery—took them eagerly—but he always chose the moment, the time, the place. McKenna had put hundreds of thousands into James’ pocket, but we didn’t really have a hold on him, at least nothing permanent. Nothing you could rely on. You could sometimes buy your way through things with him, but if he chose to jam you up, he just magically turned back into a real cop, and he was fucking unpredictable in that regard.

He had a philosophy: He figured a lot of crimes were self-induced. You borrowed money with a thirty-five percent interest rate, you got what you deserved, and he was willing to let someone like me operate unobstructed. It all depended on victimhood with The Executioner. If he saw a victim, there wasn’t an amount of money you could pay him to step aside.

The bartender brought his beer, a lot of spiteful foam on top. He stared at it unhappily for a moment.

“So?” he said, turning in his stool to lean against the bar, his long legs spread wide, surveying his new kingdom. Detective James annexed any room he entered, conquered it, and ruled it, then abdicated as he left, freeing the slaves. “Wanna tell me why I shouldn’t release your name to the Dicks on the file?”

I smiled. “As a favor?”

He laughed. “Shee-it, kid. I don’t owe you any favors.”

“You could set me up to owe you one.”

“Sorry, kid. The chances of you ever being in a position to help Mister Detective Stanley James out of a hole is fucking unlikely, so that cash ain’t got no gold behind it.”

I sighed. “Then you’re gonna have to arrest me.” Frank wasn’t going to stretch out his arm for me on this, since it wasn’t anything to do with him, and I wasn’t going to waste good money on buying my way out of something that happened to me. I hadn’t done anything.

He turned back around and picked up his foamy beer. He studied it unhappily for a moment, then drank it off in one gulp, setting the empty glass down with a smack of his lips and standing up. I watched him in the mirror again. Detective James was a good-looking guy, and he dressed well. His suits were midrange—expensive for normal cops, but not crazy. A man on a detective’s salary who was careful with his money could conceivably own a few of those suits, and The Executioner had a reputation as a dandy, so no one raised any eyebrows.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll let it worm its way through, so someone’s gonna come by and have a chat. But since you’re so fucking innocent, a virgin in the bad old world, I guess you got no worries.” He grinned down at me, but I still didn’t turn to look at him; I just watched him in the mirror. “You know that limo was stolen, right?”

I blinked, but kept my face blank. It wasn’t surprising, of course, but I hadn’t thought about it. Instead I’d been thinking about all those people in there with me, tossed around, and then. . .gone. I forced myself to shrug. “Cars get stolen, Detective. You know that ain’t my bag. I don’t carry a gun and I don’t steal cars.”

He shrugged his overcoat on. “It’s interesting.”

I frowned, touching my aching head. “That it was stolen?”

He grinned. “When it was stolen. Which was thirty-two years ago.”

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I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

2.

I went home and took a shower, changed clothes. Even when they gave you the slip, tracking down deadbeats was hot work. My apartment wasn’t much—nice enough, but just five rooms and a nice terrace, and I’d never gotten around to buying any furniture. I had a card table in the kitchen, warped and unsteady from water spills and heat, a pile of bedding on the floor of the tiny bedroom. I spent about four hours a week in my place. All I had in the kitchen was booze and all I had in the closets was cash in sturdy canvas bags under a fake bottom beneath the floorboards.

I poured myself a drink to keep the three I’d had at McHales company and stood on the terrace with my shirttails out, feeling my hair dry as the sun sank in front of me. After the Dalmore my hundred-bucks-a-bottle Scotch tasted like piss and I got depressed.

I put on a good black suit and a pair of tough black shoes with special steel toes. You had to get them custom made if you wanted dress shoes with a steel toe, but all my clothes were custom anyway. I didn’t look at myself in the mirror; it didn’t matter what I fucking looked like. All that mattered was that I felt good in them. No one understood that. If you felt good in your clothes, you would look good in them.

Leaving, I paused to look around the kitchen, the floor covered in dust except for the pathway from the liquor cabinet to the bathroom to the living room, and when I left I didn’t lock the door. There was nothing obvious to steal, and if someone was coming for the cash, was going to tear up floorboards, then the fucking door wasn’t going to stop them anyway.

The Templar Social Club was a run down old tenement on Spring Street, a sagging pile of bricks with a sad old iron sign hanging outside the door. Members only, with no membership process—you either were or you weren’t, and if you had to ask about it that sort of answered itself. The club did nothing. It had sponsored a Little League team for a few years, and sometimes they put out a table during the street fair and had four or five fat old man stand there handing out cheap shitty toys to the kids. But mostly it was a place where the Friends of Frank McKenna—a large and diverse group of men and, these days, the occasional woman—gathered any night of the week to play cards, drink coffee, shoot the shit, and do absolutely nothing illegal whatsoever.

The goon standing guard outside the front door was doing his level best to look like a guy who’d stepped outside for a cigarette four hours ago and lost track of time. I’d seen him hanging around, probably someone’s nephew or cousin, and guessed someone had finally given him a job. We hadn’t been introduced. I was pretty sure his name was Bob, but I was also sure some bright bulb had already nicknamed him Tiny.

“Evenin’,” he said, civilly enough. “Can I help you?”

I blinked, stopping short. He crowded the doorway like he’d been trained to it from an early age. A wave of tired irritation swept through me, and I found myself leaning forward, imagining this fat fuck squealing on the sidewalk, but pushed myself back. The kid, I told myself, was just doing his job. He didn’t know me, but he did know that he’d been told to watch the fucking door.

I breathed in deep and nodded at the door. “Gotta go in, see Frankie, okay?”

He nodded. Not completely stupid, at least. “Gotta frisk you.”

I smiled, actually amused this time. “Ask around, kid. I don’t carry a barker.” I held open my coat and let him step up to me. Stupid after all, as he came in close like a sack of shit, all exposed arteries and soft spots. I let him move his tiny hands over me, imagining twisting his arm until his shoulder popped out of its socket, slamming his perfectly round head into the brick wall, the smell of his blood as it poured out of his nose, the feel of the gristle when I pinched it just to make him hurt.

He stepped back after the most spectacularly bad frisk I’d ever been party to. I could have had a fucking Howitzer hidden up my ass for all the good his hands did him. But he stepped aside with a sheepish grin that was almost charming and waved me in. I took a step and then paused, turning to put my hand on his shoulder. I could feel his blood pulsing under all that flab, all those nerves, sharp little buttons to push.

“Now you know me,” I said. “Next time, you don’t move the fuck out of my way I’ll break your arms.”

I didn’t know if he believed me; I stepped inside. There was a moment, a split second, of suspension when I walked in, conversations stopped for just that half a heartbeat, then resumed with something approximating their original volume. I felt eyes on me. I liked to pretend it was the suit; no one saw a good cut any more, these days. A suit tailored for you, cut exactly for your build, it was striking and people couldn’t even put their finger on what it was about you they found striking. But it wasn’t the suit.

The Templar was just a big empty room, cheap wood paneling and ancient, horrible greasy-looking plastic tables and folding chairs. Four televisions rumbled in different spots, and a couple of radios battling it out too. The TVs were all tuned to different news stations, reporting about riots in Chicago where some bigwigs were meeting, deciding the next ten years of pork futures or whatever it was rich fucks from all over the globe got together to decide. The National Guard, bunch of assholes had nothing better to do with their time except play soldier, had been called in and the city was under curfew.

Framed pictures lined the walls: Every President of the United States, with a tiny brass plate under each one with their name. Kennedy’s twice as big as everyone else’s, with a tattered black armband still pinned in one corner after all these fucking decades. A deep haze of smoke filled the whole room, the smell of cigarettes mingling with the smell of cheap booze and burnt coffee and stale sandwiches.

As I walked, everyone stole glances at me. A couple of guys nodded at me, and I nodded back, but no one said anything, which was how I liked it. These mopes were fucking Lifers, and they had all the imagination of houseplants. I walked steadily down the center aisle towards the back office, a half-smile on my face, my black gloves on. The door was open, and I put myself in the doorway and leaned against the jam.

Frank was, as always, behind the big metal desk. For a guy who pulled in half the dirty money in the city, he looked like a mope. He was heavyset, with a bush of dark hair sprouting from his head and a perpetual shadow of a beard linking up to his uneven mustache. He had dark bags under his eyes and a belly that made him look like he’d swallowed a small animal whole, like a python. He was wearing a pair of cheap slacks that rode up too high when he sat, exposing his pale calves, and a dark red shirt over a cotton T-shirt, buttoned haphazardly. Frank McKenna was worth fucking millions, but if you passed him the street you’d have the urge to give him a dollar, tell him you hoped he straightened his life out.

He was sitting with his cheap black shoes up on the desk, his fat fingers laced over his belly. His main people were standing around with him: Chino, fat and smiling with these delicate metal-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, his long dark hair epically braided, his big oversized white dress shirt untucked, as always, as if we couldn’t imagine his gut if we couldn’t see it outlined in Rayon. Mikey D—there was always a Mikey D, in every crew—who was better-dressed, his white hair cut short and combed, his face clean-shaven, wearing a sportsjacket but no tie, burning a cigarette between his lips as usual. Frank’s kid, Frank Junior, a slightly thinner version of his Dad except where Frank smiled all the time, made you feel good about him picking your pocket and then slapping you in the face, his kid always looked sour, and wore a diamond earring his Dad didn’t approve of. It was flash.

The three of them shut up and looked at their shoes when they noticed me, but Frank smiled and threw out his arms.

“What, you lose a bet, that suit?” He shouted, grinning.

The other three eyed me from under their brows as I stepped forward, pulling a thick manila envelope from my jacket pocket and tossing it onto the desk.

“Today’s collections,” I said. “I hit everyone except Falken.”

Frank put his hands back on his belly, protectively, like he was proud of that monster. “He was the big tuna today,” he said philosophically. “You can’t reel him in by Friday—”

I nodded, dropping into one of the cracked vinyl chairs across from his desk and pulling out my pack of cigarettes, unfiltered, Gauloises. “I’m on the hook for it. I know our fucking arrangement, Frank.” I crossed my legs and tapped the pack against my palm. “He gave me the slip, is all.”

Frank nodded. “I know. Bill gave me the word earlier.”

That The Bumble served as both my backup on runs and as Frank’s snitch on me was not news, but I still didn’t like hearing it. The Bumble was a good egg, though, and we’d long ago agreed he’d just tell Frank nothing and we’d be friendly about it. I looked around the room. No one was looking at me yet. These were tough guys, each of them, unafraid of a fight. But I knew how to break them, each one. The kid was easy: Take that fucking earing and tear it out of his ear, he’d go down like a princess. I’d seen Chino get hit in the head a dozen times and just shrug it off, but go for his eyes and he freaked out. Mikey was the easiest: A solid kick in his balls and you had a punching bag in human form. These were guys who weren’t much without a gun, or three of their guys standing behind them.

“Give us a moment, fellas,” Frank said, looking at me steadily. Frank was another story; he didn’t bother with the hardcase bullshit. He looked soft, but Frank was tough. Frank knew that you gave in just once, you tagged out just once. You never got back in.

The other three still didn’t look at me as they filed out of the little office. I was used to it. Junior shut the door behind him with a glance at my shoes, probably wondering what they were, since I’d never seen the kid anything except running shoes. Not that he ran.

With the door shut, Frank leaned back tapping his belly and staring at me. I stared back, lighting my cigarette.

“We lost the kid today,” he finally said, wiggling his nose and reaching up to scratch it. Frank always gave the impression of being out of breath. “Aubrey whatshisname. Got a fucking straight job.”

I pictured the kid: Seventeen, skinny, friendly and not too bright. “Best thing for him. He wasn’t good for this.” I shrugged. “Too nice.”

He nodded. He was breathing through his nose, and it was loud and rapid. Finally he pointed at me. “You sure you got Falken? He’s given you the slip twice now.”

I blinked, picking tobacco off my tongue. “This time I at least got eyes on him. Closer and closer every time, Frankie.”

He shrugged, grinning a little, amiable. “It’s a big nut. You get socked with it you’re going to have some fucking trouble payin’ it off. You got a perfect record all these years, be a shame to crap it out.”

I shook my head. “I can handle it.”

“You salvage a lot of money. If we called it earnings, you’d be my top guy. You don’t kick up dust and you do what your told. But that don’t mean you can piss on my shoes. Close that shit out.”

I shook my head. I got five points on every dollar I brought back from the cold for Frank, which meant he got ninety-five percent of what would otherwise be complete write-offs. Getting people to pay their debts was always an uphill battle, but I always won.

I pointed my cigarette at him. “I said I can handle it. I’ll find that cocksucker.” I smiled. “And I’ll beat every dollar outta him.”

He stared back at me for a moment, breath whistling. Frank stared. It was a management technique; as a younger man he’d preceded just about every savage beating with one of these coldhearted stares, and it made tough guys search for the exits. I stared back, sucking in smoke, until he finally smiled, throwing up his hands.

“All right, you stupid cunt. Tell you what, you bring in the white whale here and I’ll give ya ten points on it, if you bring it in—no arguing. Ten.”

I nodded and stood up. “Good. The Bumble out front?”

Frank nodded, amused. “Yeah. Doing whatever it is Billy Bumbles do on their own.”

“Burn ants with a magnifying glass,” I said, spinning away and waving over my shoulder.

“Hey!” Frank shouted, and I turned with my hand on the door. He had his hands on his belly again, his favorite possession. He nodded at me. “You don’t find him, you can cover the nut?”

I shook my head, thinking of the bags under my floorboards. “Nope.”

The Bumble was dozing in the driver’s seat of the Mercedes, his flat ugly face peaceful, kind of childish. I tried to imagine The Bumble as a kid and could only see him as a shorter version of himself, dressed in short pants. The image made me shiver. The idea of getting into the car and betting my life on his driving again kept the shiver going.

I scanned the street, drawing on my cigarette. A few tourists and strollers were making their way down the sidewalk, unaware of all the fucking tough guys cheating at penny-ante poker inside the Club. There were four people I didn’t like: Two hispanic guys wearing sunglasses and tight suits, trying to look casual as they stood in the street between the Mercedes and a rusty old Ford Van, a tall, gangly white girl in the same outfit, her red hair in a tight bun on her head, and the old maid in the white suit. Also in sunglasses, pretending to read a newspaper in the dark. With sunglasses on. She leaned against the metal vending machine, grinning down at the paper like there was something funny in it, old enough to be my grandma, her gray-white hair loose and curly.

I didn’t like them at all. When I stepped for the car, the matron in the white suit let the paper drop and cut me off, tucking the paper under her elbow and reaching out.

“Excuse—”

I had never been impressed by old women. I didn’t help them across the street and I didn’t pay any attention to their opinions of me. I took hold of her outstretched arm with both hands and pushed down, hard, forcing her to bend down slightly, a squawk escaping from her. I stepped to the side and twisted her arm cruelly behind her, getting a knee into her back and pressing her down. She screeched in sudden pain, and then went nice and limp, panting on the sidewalk. A thrill went through me: I had an exact calibration of how easy it would be to cause this bitch more pain than she could stand. And it was a low number.

I glanced to my right and left. I had a gun in each ear. If I had to be psychic, I’d guess the third was somewhere behind me. I also had a holy vision of The Bumble, still dozing in the car, twitching one leg like a dreaming dog.

“Ease up,” the younger woman hissed in my ear. “Ease on up.”

I looked down at the top of White Suit’s head. No one was going to come pouring out of the Templar, muscle to back me up. I wasn’t liked, and their interest in gunplay that didn’t involve their money ended at the door. So I nodded, accidentally ashing on top of White Suit’s head.

“Easing up, boss,” I said, letting go and putting my hands up. White Suit sprang up from the sidewalk with surprising agility and bounded a step away, turning to smile at me, rubbing her shoulder. I expected to be grabbed and manhandled, but nothing happened, except the guns slid away and disappeared.

“Please,” White Suit said, her lips twitching, rubbing her arm. “I merely wish to speak with you.” She sounded smooth and educated. “Haven’t you ever heard of bone thinning?”

I nodded, flicking my cigarette away and exhaling smoke into the air. “What in fuck could we have to talk about?”

She nodded as if I’d just agreed with something he’d said. “Mr. Falken,” he said.

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SO, for the last few years I’ve been using this blog to publish a novel one chapter at a time, and I’ve kind of enjoyed it (in 2021 it was DETAINED, and last year it was DESIGNATED SURVIVOR). I write a lot, and thus have a large list of novels that haven’t gone anywhere commercially for one reason or another; a book like Collections probably will never sell to a publisher, but I also have an outsize affection for it, so here you go.

I’ll be discussing Collections in a bit more detail over at the podcast, THE NO PANTS COCKTAIL HOUR, later this month, so I’ll keep my comments about it here brief. The book was written in 2010 and hasn’t been significantly revised since, for better or for worse. I posted a draft cover a few weeks ago on social media and the response was … tepid, so I have a new cover to amaze you with:

I actually think that turned out pretty good! So thank you to everyone on Twitter who told me the original cover wasn’t great. We must put our best foot forward when giving away unpublishable novels.

So! Y’all know how this works. Every Monday I’ll post a new chapter right here, and at the end of each chapter there will be download links in various ereader formats. You can read it here or download it chapter-by-chapter, or wait until we’re done (in November or December) and I’ll post download links to a full book version.

Thanks for checking it out! Do let me know what you think — and enjoy!

COLLECTIONS

Chapter 1

Take The Bumble, for example: A man designed for his job, as if his creator had known all along. Short, but broad in the shoulders, the sort of magic metabolism that took beer and fried sandwiches and turned it into a massive slab of muscle. A man who breathed loudly through his nose no matter how much exertion he was putting out. Shovels for hands. Not particularly bright—The Bumble was never going to write his memoirs—but not exactly stupid, either, and you treated him with contempt at your peril. People were designed for things. If you figured out what you were meant to do, you were happy. Otherwise you ended up doing the wrong thing and were miserable.

Me, I was happy.

The Bumble peeled off and took a seat at one of the fragile-looking wooden tables, the chair creaking under him as he planted himself. He immediately took out a pack of cigarettes and sucked one straight from the pack to his lips. In his suit and overcoat he looked like a fucking sausage packed in, his flat, expressionless face like a mask called Generic Russian Gangster you bought at a store: Bulbous, red nose, sad, sulky eyes, not even a hint of a smile line anywhere.

I went to the bar. McHale’s was an old place, cool and dark inside because back in the good old days bars didn’t want windows. The bartender was a fancy gent in a clean white shirt and tight black trousers, thumbs hooked into the front of his pants as he chewed a toothpick, deciding on how to treat me as I slid out one of the stool and climbed aboard. To break the ice I Pulled out my money clip and tossed a hundred bucks on the bar.

He glanced at it and kept his excitement so under control I thought maybe he was blind. Or that a Sultan had been through Hell’s Kitchen the day before, leaving diamonds as tips.

Finally, he pushed himself towards me, floating slowly on currents only he could see. He picked up a towel along the way, wiped down the bar in front of me, and made the century disappear.

“What can I get you?”

I looked around. There were two other people in the bar at eleven fifteen in the morning: An old lady in thick, clownish makeup, sipping a straight gin with shaking hands, three bulging handbags arranged around her feet, and my dapper-looking fellow at the other end of the bar, drinking a Bloody Mary with a wilted-looking piece of celery sticking out of it. He was wearing a nice blue suit and his hair was combed back meticulously, but his cheeks were blue with a day’s beard. He wore a huge gold ring on his pinky, simply absolutely fucking massive, and I decided I’d have to kick him in the balls an extra time for that.

I shot my cuffs, feeling the starch in my shirt and liking it. The suit had been made by a Romanian guy over on eighteenth, didn’t speak a fucking word of English and wasn’t too interested in anything you had to say anyway, but he cut cloth like a master. It was black and the lines could split atoms.

The rows of bottles behind the bar were depressing: Bad bourbon, Scotch by way of Scotland, Pennsylvania, and dusty liqueurs, forgotten, reviled. And then, with a little patch of sun lighting it up like a diamond, way up high on a shelf over the ancient manual register, a squat bottle of dark whiskey, wide and flat on the bottom. I stared for a moment, and then looked back at the bartender; he was a softy, a fucking Jumbo Softy, six feet of beer gut and sweat stink. The guy would hurt, I thought. He’d hurt nice and easy, and my heart started pumping a little. He’d hurt without me breaking a sweat, and there was no fucking way he knew a Dalmore ‘62 when he had one in the bar with him.

I pointed, keeping one eye on the Dandy. “That,” I said, pulling my gloves from my coat pocket and laying them on the bar. “A double.”

He blinked and followed my finger, staring up at the bottle like he’d never seen it before. He probably hadn’t. Someone had put it there years ago and it had been forgotten, a fucking shame. People who collected good Scotch were fucking assholes. I thought about breaking the bartender’s legs and burning the place down around him and my mood started to get all giddy.

“I dunno,” he said. “I don’t even know how much to charge you for it.”

I put a smile on my face. Making this shitbag hurt would be a lot of fun, but I controlled myself: He wasn’t on my list, and I was going to be able to exert myself on the Dandy in a few minutes. The urge to make him squeal was thrumming inside me like always, but I told myself I was better than that, smarter. I had discipline.

“I just paid you a hundred,” I said. “Gimme a fucking double.”

He thought about it, which was obviously not too easy for him, his Adam’s Apple bobbing as he pushed his hand through his thinning black hair, dyed and bristly, a huge bald spot like the fucking moon shining in the gloom of McHale’s. Then he reached the end of his personal decision-tree, which was about three steps long, and shrugged, reaching up on his toes to pull the dusty bottle down. He examined it, suddenly cheerful, as he carried it over to me.

“You sure, man? This shit looks like it was here when they built the place. It maybe isn’t—”

Bartenders who didn’t know shit about liquor pissed me off. I saw myself taking a handful of his greasy hair and smacking his face down into the bar, felt the impact in my arm, heard the crack of his nose, smelled the geyser of easy blood, and I had to struggle to keep my hands down, my arms on their best behavior.

“I’m sure,” I said as he flipped a tumbler onto the bar in front of me. With a smartassed smile, he worked the cork with something approaching skill and poured a sloppy double into my glass, a bit more than necessary, which didn’t earn him any points. The smell was fucking heaven, and I closed my eyes to savor it, imagining what it was going to be like. A hundred dollars. I couldn’t fucking believe it.

I opened my eyes and took the glass, swirling the booze around a little. I took another sniff, this time with my nose in the glass, and then I tipped the glass back and drank it off, the whole fucking thing, in one swallow. The waste felt wonderful. The whiskey tasted like gold.

I opened my eyes and made sure the Dandy was still sitting there. He’d made a dent in his Bloody Mary. Fucking mixed drinks. People who ruined good booze with mixes deserved what they got.

A flush spread through my middle, happy and warm, like autumn leaves in the sun. It even made me forgive the asshat bartender. I was filled with love and kindness. The Dandy, he was on my list, and that made me even happier.

I rapped my knuckles on the bar and picked up my gloves. “Thanks,” I said, and turned to nod at The Bumble. He rumbled up off his chair and followed me back towards the Dandy as I slipped my gloves on, crisp and black. My hands felt normal inside them, like they belonged.

He looked up as we approached and I put a big smile on my face, pointing at him. “Miiissteerrr Falken!” I said, throwing my arms out. I ran my eye over his suit: Expensive, but a piece of shit. Off the rack, something assholes bought because they didn’t know what the fuck the word tailor meant. Gobs getting on and off the train every day to scrape themselves off behind a desk, that’s who wore a suit like that. No self-respecting man would. The Dalmore baked in my belly, home at long last after its long bottled nightmare.

He looked up, his eyes going from me to The Bumble and back to me. He was a good-looking guy, a little chubby and suffering from a catastrophic razor burn under his fast beard, his fat face tanned and flushed. He looked prosperous enough, which made me happy. He had a dark face, with a heavy brow and an elegant nose I was jealous of. I rubbed the big round thing on my own face self-consciously as we approached: The Dandy was good-looking, and I was: Not.

“Do I know you fellas?” he asked, easy, leaning back and lacing his hands across his belly. The Bumble ignored him and scooted around behind him, sliding into the stool to his right and angling himself so as to block any attempted escape in that direction. I slid into the stool around the corner of the bar from him, which let me look right at him without twisting my body. I crossed my legs and put my hands in my lap, and pushed that smile.

“No, Mr. Falken, we never met,” I said, leaning forward slightly, crowding him a little more. Ease it on. I took my time. I could feel it squirming inside me, wanting to take hold of him, feel his flesh and bones, make him hurt and feel that through his vibrating skin. I wanted to do it so badly. But there were rules, and rules were what had kept me sane all these years, so I stuck with them. Rules also let me do my job the right way, which so far had kept the black spot out of my hands. “But I represent someone you have met. Someone you owe a lot of fucking money to.”

Usually this was when they got real serious and pious, real polite. This guy just grinned.

“I owe a lot of money to a lot of people,” he said, that oily grin making him look like a goddamn monkey.

I lifted my hands a little and tugged the gloves on nice and tight, my heart singing in my chest. He was going to be an asshole about it. It was like a gift. “Frank McKenna,” I said. “That ring any bells?”

He nodded cheerfully. “Sure, sure. Frankie.” He twisted around to look at The Bumble, who sat like a sack of potatoes, staring at Falken with a steady, lifeless expression, chewing a toothpick. Falken looked back at me. “So you’re the legbreaker, huh?” He put up his hands. “Let me guess,” he pointed at The Bumble without looking at him. “He’s gonna break my fingers while you play Good Cop and tell me there’s an easy way to avoid this sort of thing.”

I shook my head, trying to match his smile for insincerity. It was no challenge. “Mr. Falken, let me tell you something about myself.”

I paused and let him look back at me. I searched his face; he wasn’t afraid, that was for sure. Because he thought this was just scare tactics. He thought this was just the first try, shake him up and see what kind of loose change fell out. Just when he lost patience and opened his mouth to ask me what the fuck I was waiting for, I spoke up.

“I was a big kid, Mr. Falken. And I was stupid as the fucking day is long, so I got left back in school couple of times. So I was a fucking giant in my class. When I was eleven years old I figured this out. Shit, I could pick up the other kids in my class and throw ’em around.” I leaned forward a little. “So I did. I beat the shit out of everyone. I enjoyed it. I got suspended, so I beat up the kids in my neighborhood. I liked sitting on some little shit’s chest, my knees pinning his arms, I liked the soft crunch when I broke a nose, the wet sound, that lucky moment when a tooth went flying. I fucking loved it.”

He composed himself, leaning back a little, forcing a nonchalant attitude. An asshole. My mood was lifting with every hot beat of my heart.

“My Dad, he didn’t like that. Took the stupid old fuck a while to figure it out, but once he knew what I was doing with my free time, he knocked me down and he beat the living shit outta me, and asked me how I liked it.” I shrugged a little. “What do you think?”

Falken was smiling faintly, but his eyes were wary. “You didn’t.”

I shook my head, remembering that ecstatic feeling—I could take it, I could feel my own nose turned to pulp, my own arms pinned under his impossible weight, his whisky breath, and I could take it. It was a license to do it to other people, because I wasn’t doing anything I couldn’t handle myself.

“I did. I fucking loved it. It hurt, sure, but it’s the way of the fuckin’ world. But my Dad was a fucking huge slab, y’know, an’ he put me in the hospital. Broke both my arms, my nose, three ribs, and I bled when I shit for weeks.” The doctors saying I should have died, it was a fuckin’ miracle the drunk old bastard hadn’t killed me. I made a comical face of horror. “Oh, Da’ was fuckin’ broke up. Felt terrible. An’ he taught me, right there in the hospital, the only lesson I ever needed to learn: You need rules. If I kept up just beatin’ the snot outta everyone I could, eventually I’d hit into someone who could beat me back, and I might not make it. You had to have rules.”

Falken had hooked on, and didn’t say anything while I paused. I leaned back.

“I haven’t hurt a fuckin’ fly since then,” I said slowly, “who didn’t deserve it. Y’know how I know when someone deserves it?”

He shook his head in a hazy way. “How?”

I nodded. “Mr. Frank McKenna tells me. I get a list of Bad People, an’ I go around and do what I love.” I jerked my head at The Bumble. “He’s here to pull me off you.”

Falken blinked and we stared at each other for a moment, eye to eye. The color was fading from his cheeks, and I thought maybe I was getting through. He opened his mouth to say something, and I cut him off.

“The rules say, however, that you can buy your way off my list, Mr. Falken. You’re two weeks over on your interest. You bring yourself current and pay up this week’s, we walk away and I go home blueballed.”

Sometimes they made a move here. It happened, and I thought I was ready for it. This was a desperate moment; these shitheads didn’t have the money, or they’d have paid their juice. They saw a beating in their immediate future and some of them had the spirit to run, to try and get in a sucker punch, to scream and yell and try to get the attention of some Bull wandering around on the street. I made a show of checking my watch, and for a second I was distracted, because it was twenty minutes behind. I was frowning down at the glinting diamonds on the face when Falken surged forward and shoved me in the chest, overbalancing me on the stool and sending me crashing to the floor.

I scissored my legs and kicked myself free, rolling over and pushing myself up into a low crouch. The Bumble was just sitting at the bar, all alone, looking bland, his hands folded in front of him, like a newly erected statue of The Bumble.

“What the fuck?” I asked.

The Bumble shrugged. “He was fast.” He jerked his hand over his shoulder, indicating a flimsy swinging door marked PRIVATE.

The urge to hurt The Bumble sang in me, sweet music, but I leaped up and pushed past him with just a slap on the shoulder, because experience had taught me that The Bumble could not be hurt.

The door led to a short hallway, white plaster and scratched-up wood paneling, at the end of which was a more formidable-looking door. Falken was crouched over the lock, working it, and twisted his head around to look back at me as I ran. It was only a flash before he turned away again, but he didn’t look scared. He looked like he was enjoying himself.

I was three steps away when he popped the lock and spun behind it, yanking the door shut behind him. I crashed into the door and bounced back, staggering back a few steps, off balance. A sudden piercing, keening noise filled the air. I couldn’t place it, but it hurt my ears. I started laughing, launching myself forward again. This was just giving me permission to hurt Falken extra, and my mind was churning with ideas. I was getting creative.

I tore the door open and the noise stopped suddenly, like I’d tripped a switch somehow. I dashed into a small office, cluttered and dark, and skidded to a halt, spinning around and smacking into a huge old wooden desk that almost filled the room completely.

The fucking room was empty.

I stood there, panting, a dumb grin on my face. There was no other door, there was no window. The room was paneled in horrible dark wood, and had a low dropped ceiling of white foam, speckled everywhere with brown water stains. Aside from the desk, which was piled with papers and phone books and manila folders and a fucking ocean of gray dust, there were four wooden filing cabinets that looked like they were holding together out of ancient habit. The walls were covered in framed newspapers and photos. I started to choke; the room was a desert of dust and wood.

I adjusted my tie as I burst back into the bar. The Bumble was still sitting at the bar, happy as a clam. I pointed at the fucking skinny fuck behind the bar, who was staring at me with the phone pressed against his ear, calling it in.

“Oy! Skinny Fuck!” I shouted.

He dropped the phone and backed up into the back of the bar. “Wh-what?”

I stepped up onto the footrest and threw myself over the bar, taking hold of the skinny fuck’s shirt and pulling him forward as I dropped back to the floor. Then I took hold of his hair and smashed his face down onto the bar, medium style, not hard enough to knock him out.

He screeched like a pig, and I smiled.

“How do you get out of that back office?”

He stood there swaying, both hands flat on the bar. “Wh-what?”

I took hold of his shirt and yanked him forward again. “The back office. In the back. Exits.”

He blinked. “Just one door!” He shouted. “I swear, man. There’s no way out from it!”

I stared at him, trembling with the sweet desire to tear into him. He was soft. A Jumbo Softy ripe for a bust out, and I wanted to put my hands on him in the worst way, and if he was lying he would be on the list. I searched his face, careful. He wasn’t lying. He was terrified.

I let him go and leaned back against the bar, breathing hard. I looked at the skinny fuck, and waved him off. “Give me another double,” I said, pulling cash from my pocket and dropping a dollop on the bar. “And one for yerself, eh?”

I looked over at The Bumble. The motherfucker shrugged. “What you gonna say to the boss?”

I blew hair out of my face and shrugged back. “The fucker disappeared.”

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