Free Burn by Sean Doolittle Page A

the previous generation of guys who'd held down the chairs outside Warek's Café.
    It had been a problematic situation, fraught with complications on many levels. Despite Andrew's fighting words, Larry Tomiczek was no punk. By then, Larry was known all over the harbor and beyond as the youngest guy ever to run his own crew for Cedric Zaganos. Technically, Larry had been Andrew's superior.
    By nightfall, word of their tangle had spread to the far reaches of the kingdom and its rivals. The story was already mutating into different versions of itself, each one grander and gorier than the last.
    Nobody but Andrew and Larry had known the pitiful truth about what had really sparked their rumble that day. Andrew had only gotten the better end because the cops had cleared the place before things could get any uglier. But the truth wouldn't have changed the reality of the situation.
    Because losing an eyebrow was one thing. Losing face was something else entirely, and the thing at Warek's had been bad all around. Bad for Larry, bad for the organization. Very bad for Andrew, considering Larry rightfully had the organization on his side.
    He'd given his friend little choice. Andrew had understood that even then. A guy in Larry's position didn't stay a guy in Larry's position by letting business like what had happened at Warek's slide. Friends were friends, but the food chain ruled.
    Andrew had woken up the next morning hiding under a phony name in a Motel 6 near the airport. As for choices, under the circumstances he'd counted only two.
    In Baltimore, the Zaganos organization dominated half the waterfront, plus anything worth dominating in the West that wasn't directly controlled by New York. Cedric Z had only one important competitor: a 260-pound sociopath named Henrietta Mingo, who controlled the other half of the waterfront and ran the rackets in East Baltimore. Inheritor of the organization her infamous father Henry had built, Henrietta Mingo had been successfully recruiting away Zaganos employees for years.
    So Andrew—suddenly out of work, faced with the prospect of spending his days scanning the horizon for signs of Larry—had decided to make things easier for everybody.
    He'd joined those who had already defected, exchanging asylum for what turned out to be more than a decade of indentured servitude to the scariest fairy godmother in all Baltimore.
    Maybe you really did choose your family. But that didn't mean you always had appealing options.
    “By the way, it's hotter than hell out here.” Larry perched on a stool at the breakfast bar and sipped at the bourbon Andrew had poured. Two glasses, three fingers each, both neat. “The travel guide said seventy-five and sunny all year round.”
    “Did the travel guide recommend anything in terms of beachwear?”
    “I didn't read that far. Why?”
    “No reason.”
    “I get it.” Larry tugged a black leather lapel and smoothed it with his fingers. “Like the skin? I bought it special for the trip. Figured I'd try to look like I fit in with all the movie stars.”
    “You look like a Polack goombah.”
    Larry held out a sleeve, considered it.
    “Maybe you're right. I should borrow something of yours.” He gestured with his drink. “Nice pants you got on there, J. Crew. Retired a couple months and already shopping outta the yuppie catalogs, huh?”
    Andrew leaned against the corner of the refrigerator. “You never answered my question.”
    “Sorry, what was it again? I forgot.”
    Andrew sipped his whiskey.
    “Oh, right. What am I doing here. That's easy.” Larry made a gesture with his hand, pantomiming the act of aiming a remote control at a television. “I just turned on CNN, saw California was on fire, and thought to myself, hey, what do you know? The Torch must have gone to visit his cousin. Pretty simple from there. I just followed the smoke.”
    “Hilarious.”
    “Don't worry. Nobody else is coming to visit, if that's what you're wondering.”
    “All I'm