Free Urban Renewal by Andrew Vachss Page A

all the way back over to the desk. The old man was still there. And a thin stack of hundreds was there, too.
    Harold swept the money into his coat pocket without counting it, and the twins walked back up the stairs.

    “ WHY DID you—?”
    “Because the grand isn’t all we got,” Harold cut off his twin.
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah. See, if Cross didn’t think we were coming to him straight, he wouldn’t have paid us a dime.”
    “So?”
    “So Cross, that’s a man you never want thinking you’re not playing straight with him. You remember that little guy? The one who took us over?”
    “Sure.”
    “That’s got to be Buddha.”
    “Who?”
    “One of that crew. I heard he once won a ten-thousand-dollarbet from some sucker who thought no way a man could ever
shoot
a damn bumblebee at twenty feet. Hell, you can’t hardly
see
one at that distance.”
    “And he did that?”
    “With a
pistol
! That’s what people say.”
    “Real people?”
    “Oh yeah.”
    “Damn.”
    “I know. I just wish
we
knew someone who wanted that pretty boy killed. He’s as good as dead anyway.”
    “I guess,” Howard replied, already back to his normal state: total indifference to anything except a threat or a target.

    “ YOU THINKING what I’m thinking, boss?”
    “It was a mistake to bring So Long back with you?”
    “Hey, brother! There’s no reason to be banging on me. Anyway, we haven’t laid out dime one, so why even go there?”
    “You’re right, Buddha. Sorry.”
    “Huh!” the pudgy man sniffed, brushing aside an empty apology for something that hadn’t remotely offended him in the first place. “What I was thinking was, if that new girl at the Double-X, if she wanted her problem taken care of …”
    “Because we got no choice anyway.”
    “That’s how I see it. You?”
    “Yeah. He’s crazy enough to try and hire the Motley Twins, he keeps on trying, he’s gonna find someone crazy enough to take the job.”
    “So? Only place he knows to come is the club. He shows up, we just—”
    “Wait! Hold up, brother. Your idea, it’s actually not a bad one. Not at all.”
    “I thought you said—”
    “Money’s money, right? So, if that bottom feeder
has
some, why shouldn’t
we
get it?”

    JEAN-BAPTISTE DRESSED carefully, checking his reflection in the three-panel mirror he’d told Ronni she needed to have. “You got to be able to see what
they
gonna see, baby. Always keep your edge.”
    Oh, he looked
fine
. Not flashy, not like some pimp on the prowl, more like a successful businessman out for a little fun.
    And he was every bit of that.
All
that.
    Jean-Baptiste pulled his custom ride inside the chain-link fence surrounding the Double-X. As he knew from his previous visit, the gate would swing open automatically as a car approached.
    He braked to a stop just past the front entrance. The Maori known as K-1 to distinguish him from his look-alike cousin, K-2, moved as slowly as a man slogging through quicksand, but he somehow managed to block the car from proceeding any farther.
    “Valet parking only, sir.”
    If the man at the door recognized J.B., he gave no sign. J.B. palmed him a fifty, said, “A single, okay?”
    In unspoken acknowledgement of the driver’s bribe-request to park the Lexus where it would be in no danger of being dinged, the doorman pointed to his right. J.B. walked toward one of the few unoccupied single tables in the place.But before he reached his destination, he felt a … presence of some kind behind him, herding him toward a larger table, using the air compressed between them as a push bar.
    Some dark figure pulled out a chair, and J.B. found himself seated across from a man with unremarkable features. On his right, a real-life Indian. Like an Apache or something. On his left, a pudgy man with dark hair and darker eyes.
    An instinct he trusted told him not to look around. He watched as the man facing him opened his left hand. A small flame leaped from that hand to the cigarette in