Free Buy Back by Brian M Wiprud Page B

and save you guys big bucks.”
    I couldn’t believe it, but his eyes showed what I can only describe as curiosity. He’s a client, and you always let your client keep the upper hand, or let them think they have it over on you. Right up until the point they start hinting they don’t need you. Or that you need them. At that point you become the whipping boy.
    Tommy Davin is nobody’s whipping boy.
    I took that opportunity to stand up over my doll chair and leave. I think what I left unsaid was clear enough. If he wouldn’t pay what the price was, I’d find somebody else who would.

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
    EXITING THE CARROLL STREET SUBWAY station back in Brooklyn, I still had reason to be hopeful that in a week I’d have the fifteen grand if not more. Hopeful that all I had to do was lean on Huey with the photo of him going into and coming out of that green loft. I’d take a healthy percentage of whatever he got from Ms. French and price Max out even if he offered more.
    I checked my e-mail, but the incriminating photos hadn’t come through. As soon as they did, I’d go visit the bistro and show Huey the pix on my phone, make the goofball give me the money or have his meal ticket punched. The bistro was named after his wife; Ariel owned it. Huey was her employee. For now.
    You’d think I had enough to worry about, like that it was windy on Smith Street and I had to make sure my hundred-dollar hat didn’t fly off.
    I was still worried about the cats, though—whether Tigsy had his shot and Herman had eaten. I had hopes that Snuggles and Lady were bringing projectile vomiting and shitting to a new, unprecedented level at the expense of Gustav’s wits.
    Without the incriminating Bridget photo, I didn’t even want to stroll by the bistro and maybe run into Huey smoking out front. I could have walked around the block to my place and checked out the progress on my new front door. Until I caught a reflection of myself in the window of the Neapolitan Barber Shop. Of the new hat. Of my hair.
    I’d never walked into the Neapolitan Barber Shop but decided to give it a shot. There are faded red curtains framing the shop window, and a mural of Capri fills the back wall. The wall to the right of the mural was mirrors and giant red and chrome barber chairs. Standing next to and about as tall as one of the chairs was a golden brown man. He was in a smock, sixties, with a golden brown pompadour. It wasn’t a toupee, but a work of his own art crafted from hair dye and probably six pounds of hair spray. The artist’s toothy smile showed obvious pride in his creation. I’d of course seen this guy and his hair around the neighborhood, and through the shop window, but like Sammy he didn’t know me from nobody.
    He had an old-world Italian accent. “You a-shaved!”
    I guess he did recognize me.
    So I says, “That’s what they keep telling me. I’m Tommy Davin.”
    “I know who you are. I am Guiseppe Contagliere, but my customers call me Jocko.” He tilted his head at the barber chair. “Sit!”
    I hesitated. To tell you the truth, in all the years I’d been in the neighborhood, I’d probably seen a customer in Jocko’s place maybe five times. I felt sorry for the old guy, guessed he’d seen Carroll Gardens go from a family neighborhood in the fifties to a war zone in the seventies and now booming with gentrification. His place, like Dominic’s Restaurant, and a handful of other places, was a tiny island of the past in a rising sea of hipsters and real estate speculators. Jocko probably owned the building and didn’t need to cut hair except that it was what he’d always done and needed to do to get up in the morning. The barbershop would turn into a mod dress shop or brioche hut the second they were patting the dirt on Jocko’s grave.
    I dropped my overcoat and new hat on one chair and sat in the other.
    Jocko swept a sheet over me, and fit my neck with a slip of tissue before cinching the bib tight to my Adam’s apple.