Honor

“Your friend said he had a bad home life. He mention where the kid’s family lived?”

She shook her head. “Just here in the city somewhere. Said the dad had been deep in the gutter for a long time. Apparently he was a user and liked to hit up all Novak’s action.”

I was racking my brain trying to find a link, any kind of connection that could have the kid desperate enough or angry enough to take on the devil in his own playground.

The girl cleared her throat and reached for her hat. “For what it’s worth, he seemed like a nice enough kid. He just came across like he really wanted a job to help his family out. Your name didn’t come up until after the fact because if he had mentioned wanting to get into business with you or any of your crew, I would’ve told him it was a bad idea. Men like you don’t make things better. He didn’t seem malicious or anything. He really didn’t seem smart enough to put one over on you.”

The slight dig was there but I let it go. The kid had messed with me using schoolyard tactics when I was used to outright warfare. We were fighting different kinds of battles, but if I had learned anything from the desert and my life there, it was that the most unassuming person could be the biggest threat. Killers didn’t come stamped with a big letter K in the center of their foreheads. They more often than not came with disarming grins and a friendly handshake right before they put a bullet between your eyes or a bomb under the front seat of your car. I wasn’t going to underestimate the kid no matter how harmless or dumb he came across.

I needed to figure out what his deal was with me and I couldn’t do that unless I tracked him down.

“The friend of yours who brought him to you in the first place, where can I find him?” She balked and started twisting her fingers together. She obviously didn’t want to rat her buddy out to me. “You don’t have to tell me, but then, when I send all my guys to rattle every squat and shake down every hostel they can find, I’ll make sure they let all the street kids know you were the one that sent them.”

Life was hard on the street. It was even harder when you were a woman. If I went and rattled enough cages and dropped her name when I did it, we both knew it would be a veritable death sentence for her unless she took the money she was gonna earn from the stuff she jacked from Stark and hit the road. The understanding of what I was telling her was clear in her gaze.

“His name is Squirrel. And that is seriously all I know him as. When he comes to town he likes to hang out at a bar down by the docks called the Blue Ribbon. They let a lot of metal and punk bands play there on the weekends, so the crust kids like to hang out there and drink cheap beer.”

I had no idea what a crust kid was but it sounded like I was going to find out.

“How does one identify a young man named Squirrel?” I asked the question in complete seriousness, but she seemed to find it hilarious. She started laughing until she bent over and grabbed her stomach. When she looked back up at me, her cheeks had streaks where her tears had washed away the dirt.

“Kids get their names on the street for a reason. Look for a kid that looks like he could be smuggling food in his cheeks. He also has a tattoo on the back of his neck of something that looks like it could be a chipmunk or a squirrel. He’s not going to want to talk to you. Those kids are going to scatter when they see you coming.”

The cell phone lying on my desk started to ring and we both took that as a cue that our conversation had run its course. I picked it up and put it to my ear, and watched the girl slip silently out of my office. She was an interesting one, and I had a feeling even though I promised to forget she ever existed, I hadn’t seen the last of her.

“Are you looking at the monitors?” Chuck’s question was barked in my ear and I turned around in my chair, tapping the keys on my computer that turned the bank of security video feeds on behind my desk. Since it was the afternoon and nowhere near working hours yet, I had left them off while I talked to Noe.

When the screens fired back to life, it took every speck of self-control I had not to throw my cell phone at the monitors. At least twenty men wearing black tactical gear with the word “police” across the back were storming through the front doors of the club with weapons raised.

Luckily, there were no customers crowding the dance floor or cluttering the bar area, but the employees that were milling about were all frantic as I watched the raid happen in front of me like it was a TV show.

“What?” I couldn’t form any more words than that as I watched one of the cops approach Chuck, who still had his phone to his ear. The cop stopped in front of my head of security and I heard him ask where I was. On the video feed I saw Chuck hesitate for a second, but because I recognized the deep voice when the policeman spoke, I told Chuck to go ahead and bring him on up to my office while his cohorts continued to poke their noses and guns into every nook and cranny of my club.

I couldn’t face the cop sitting down. Not when what I really wanted to do was take the automatic rifle he had in his hands, and turn it on him and demand he leave me and my business alone. He stripped off his protective face gear and glared at me just as hard as I was glaring at him.

I don’t know how Titus King found himself on the right side of the law when he had every single characteristic that should have made him a man like me, terrible childhood and a parent that preferred death and brutality to loving nurture included.

“Why are you raiding my club, cop?” I put my hands on the edge of the desk to avoid pummeling him in the face.

Titus narrowed his eyes and I swore his hatred of me and what I did to keep this city alive blazed out of his gaze like the blue flame of a blowtorch.