Free Grinder by Mike Knowles Page B

were getting shorter. Soon it would be grunts then blood.
    “Whoever it is, he's watching you to make sure I play ball.”
    “When?”
    “Over the next day or two.”
    “No. When can I deal with this?”
    I smiled. “You have changed. Two years ago you would have your hair up, and you'd have been in the street already.”
    “I am in the street — phone's portable.”
    “Don't do anything yet. I can fix it.”
    “When?”
    “Give me a day, two max. Find whoever's watching and keep tabs on him. Wait for my call before you do anything. I can fix this, and then he'll be gone and everything will be cool.”
    “I think I already found him,” Steve said.
    I pressed the phone harder into my ear out of fear that Steve could instantly make the situation infinitely worse. “Will you wait for my call?”
    I heard traffic digitized through the phone lines. Then Steve sighed and answered. “Two days. Any more, and I can't promise anything.”
    “This guy can't get beaten to death on the street; that will just bring more heat. If he goes, it's got to be quiet, like he didn't exist. Once I handle my end, no one can know what your stalker was up to. That means no one can find him.”
    “Call me when I can move.”
    I said goodbye and hung up the phone. I nosed the car into traffic again, hearing fewer horns than when I pulled over, and moved back towards Upper James and the Mediterranean restaurant I was at an hour before. Traffic had come to life since I had been online. The roads were clogged like the tunnels in an ant farm. It was like the mountain was channelling downtown just for me. I looked around at the frustrated commuters and smiled. I enjoyed the feeling of being back in the city. With each breath, I felt like I was uploading what I was, one file at a time. I felt more like myself than I had in a long time. The only problem was the scraggly reflection in the rearview. I didn't look like me — which wasn't a bad thing — but I didn't look like anyone else from around here either — which certainly was. I would stand out in a crowd to almost anyone, and I wasn't about to go up against just anyone; I was going to tamper with the lives of dangerous men. Dangerous men who would notice an unkempt loner in their periphery.
    At the third red light, I rolled down the window so I could smell the black diesel leaving the bus in front of me. I lost myself in the smell of the city in some sort of grey-concrete zen daze. The fumes mingled with the roar of the bus engine, dulling the cell phone chirp from the seat beside me. I got my head in the window and opened the phone on its third ring.
    “You want me to call you back, stay off the line,” Paolo said.
    “I saw the video,” I said.
    “Something, ain't it? Stupid kids are like parrots repeating everything they hear.” Paolo never stopped comparing people to animals. He loved to show everyone how low they were on the food chain compared to him.
    “Parrots are smart, though, aren't they?”
    “Being capable of speech doesn't make anything smart. Let's see a parrot make me an omelette. That would be one smart fucking bird.”
    Traffic picked up and I stayed right, riding the slow lane back to the plaza. “The video, they mention three names,” I said.
    “Figlio,
I gave you all the information you need. Did those two years make you soft? You never needed me to hold your hand before.”
    “I never had to wipe your nose before,” I said, and instinctively moved the phone away from my ear to avoid what was to come.
    “You little fuck!” Paolo screamed. “You think because I asked you for help you're worth all this trouble? I let you go as long as I did because you were on the back burner. You never got out, you never left; I just put you on pause. If you want, I can finish this myself, but if I do then I don't need you. And if I don't need you, what the fuck do I need the bartender for? Not to mention those nice people who own the boat you were working on.”
    I knew