Free Luthecker by Keith Domingue Page A

other kept the barrel of the AR-15 trained on his mid-section. The man with the rifle locked eyes on Alex, a hard, intense stare meant to intimidate. It worked. Alex’ heart raced. He tried his best to hold the gaze, to hide the fact that his body wanted to just turn and run. Reading these men at this point was simple but moot. Although he knew these were violent men who would die violent deaths, and much sooner than they thought, they could still opt to kill him at any moment, on instinct, with little or no perceptible impact on their fate, such was the consistent and vicious nature of their choices.
    And there was no way Alex could know for sure if this would or would not happen.
    There were two reasons for this, why, even with his abilities, he could not predict their next action. The first was that whenever the macro-patterns of someone’s life were strong, short, and simple, the end results clear, it often meant that the micro-patterns of any given moment were extremely hard to predict. Killing Alex meant nothing to these men, the act not a particularly impactful choice on their fate. In this environment, there would be no liability. It would be as if it never happened.
    But the far larger reason why the next few moments were out of Alex’ perceptive range is because they directly involved him.
    This was the one hole in Alex’s abilities. Despite his uncanny ability to read the countless patterns of a person’s behavior, physicality, environment, and despite how these details would form derivations and images in his mind of their fate that were near certain, there was one person whose life he could never see clearly, never predict the outcome of: his own.
    “He’s clean.” One of the guards said to the other, as he examined Alex’s backpack, and one of his Kali sticks.
    “And definitely Winn’s guy.”
    The other guard kept his eyes locked on Alex but took his left hand briefly off the barrel of his AR-15 and gave a quick knock on the door to unit 501.
    The door opened a crack.
    A single visible eye looked Alex up and down a second before a deep voice from behind the door spoke.
    “Let him in.”
    Alex entered the unit as the door closed behind him. He handed over the duffle bag to the host as he did a quick scan of the apartment: he noted the large black leather couch, the sixty-inch flat screen bolted to the wall, the array of briefcases and duffle bags on the floor beside the couch. His eyes settled on a Mac 10 automatic pistol with three clips all laid out on the glass coffee table.
    This was not a home, he thought to himself. This was a business office.
    “Winn’s one crazy fucker.”
    Alex looked at the well dressed, large framed black man who sifted through the cash in the bag handed to him by Alex. Satisfied, the man tossed the bag on the floor, next to the others.
    “Rooker,” he announced as his name while he held out his hand.
    Alex shook it, and noticed the diamond-laced, platinum Bentley watch on Rooker’s left wrist.
    “Crazy I’m tellin’ ya. Shit that fool used to do. And now thinkin’ his brand a’ nonsense is gonna change things. But he is a man of his word. And so am I. So tell him he’s in the clear. No shit’s gonna go down on that turf. And he can bring people in and out if he wants. But…”
    Rooker pointed a finger at Alex.
    “If shit
starts
in that neighborhood, all bets are off. And I’m gonna shut it down. So you tell him that too. Understood?”
    “Understood.”
    Rooker sized Alex up a moment.
    “You’re pretty brave for a white boy.”
    He gave Alex an ominous smile.
    “You have safe passage out. But you best get a move on, hear?”
    Alex nodded.
    As he looked at Rooker one last time he knew that in three months, a shotgun blast in the back of the head from a rival awaited him, and then the chaos would begin.
    Rooker knocked once on the door, and it opened.
    Alex exited the apartment, walking between the two guards, and never once looked back.
    • •