Free Delicious by Mark Haskell Smith Page A

beautiful, the hot and hunky. Wilson put the guys with the biggest bankroll with the babes with the hottest bods. He kept the dorks and retards outside, behind the rope. And if someone got drunk or caused trouble, he’d bash their face in.
    These guys from Las Vegas were trouble, right? Why not just bash their faces in?
    Wilson sat up and mopped his face with a towel. He felt his biceps, hard as stone. He smiled. These arms might come in handy.
    He realized that he resented his cousin, Joseph. Joseph was always at the ‘
ahas,
the all-important powwows and big business meetings, while Wilson was excluded. He didn’t know much about finance and loans and paperwork things, and he couldn’t cook for shit, but that didn’t mean he was stupid. He was supposed to be part of the family, the
ohana,
and part of the business. They should include him.
    Wilson went into the locker room and bought a couple vials of anabolic steroids from a bodybuilder he knew. He went into a toilet stall and sat down. Wilson figured he might need the boost if he was forced to practice the ancient Hawaiian art of
lua
and break some poor fucker’s bones. It’s good to be prepared.
    He carefully—and it was slippery because he was still sweaty—filled a new syringe with a double dip of the stuff and injected it into the muscles on his left calf. It burned going in. Although he liked the muscle mass he got from taking steroids, he didn’t like the way it altered his mood, making him short-tempered and cranky. Normally he was pretty laid back.
    ...
    Francis spread his new purchases, courtesy of an accommodating bellhop at the hotel, on top of his desk. A vial of Levitra, a six-pack of Viagra, and a gram of crystal meth; it was a goodtime vacation party pack. He took a moment and surveyed the decrepit termite feeder of an office that served as production headquarters. A kind of fungus, the color of pureed iguana, grew freely from under the windowsill, slowly spreading across the dark brown paneling. The window was filmedwith years of cigarette smoke residue, tinting the sunlight a carcinogenic hue, and the spattered brown carpet felt vaguely squishy underfoot. The brown-on-brown motif was carried further to include the curtains, ratty and scarred, and the cheap wood-grain Formica desk. Even the lamp was brown. It was like being inside a mushroom.
    The place, however, had a Third World charm, and Francis liked it better than the soulless industrial parks he usually worked in. It was nothing like Chad’s architectural marvel stuffed with expensive modern masterworks. There were no shoji-screen offices or modern concrete fountains in the foyer, no clever series of Ed Ruscha prints or massive Julian Schnabel paintings, no automatic espresso machine from Italy, and no handmade leather chairs from France. But hey, that’s okay; look out the window, it’s fucking Hawaii. He’d get some fresh orchids and it’d be fine.
    That is, until Joseph and Sid came busting in.
    Francis swept his treats into the desktop drawer and turned his attention to the two men. At first Francis didn’t know what to make of them. There was the one who called himself Sid, standing there like a Sumo wrestler, huffing and puffing and all pissed off. Then there was the cute one, taking a step back, listening. Man, was he cute.
    He ignored the big one, tuned him out. These guys are always the same: gimme, gimme, gimme. Francis was sick of hearing it. It was whining disguised as tough-guy talk. He’d heard it from the Teamsters in Miami. He’d heard it from the Gambino family when he did a movie in New York City. He’d heard it in San Francisco, Seattle, and Chicago. Every goddamn time he did a job it was some big fat tough guy telling him he owed it to them, to the locals, the union, themafia, the fucking brotherhood-of-whatever. Pay up or else. Gimme, gimme, gimme. Who did they think he was, Santa Claus?
    Francis kept his