Tod Goldberg - The Reformed

Father Eduardo stepped aside, and that’s when Junior got his first look at me. He wasn’t pleased.

“You,” he said.

“Me,” I said.

“You stole my BlackBerry,” he said.

I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled it out. “You’ve got terrible coverage,” I said, and tossed it back to him.

He saw Sam on the sofa. “Your girlfriend looks different,” he said.

“Just a different outfit,” I said. “You want your car keys?”

“I already got rid of that car,” he said.

“You know these motherfuckers?” Killa said.

“Language,” Junior said. “You’re in a church.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “This is my church now, and I allow for all kinds of language.”

Junior looked mildly surprised. “Oh, really? Is that true, Eduardo?”

Father Eduardo began to speak, but before he could get a word out, Sam jumped up from the sofa, took two steps and slapped him. Hard. “You don’t talk,” Sam said. “Nobody talks but the big man. You hear? He wants you to talk, he’ll tell you when.”

Killa made a move toward Sam, which didn’t surprise me in the least, but it was especially telling. Junior grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him back. “Stop,” he said. “You don’t do anything unless I say so, remember? Same rules.”

“Maybe you want to chain your puppy up?” Sam said. “I’d hate for him to get hurt.”

“Do you know me?” Killa said to Sam.

“Yeah,” Sam said, “I know all the pretty babies. Are you a pretty baby? I like all the pretty drawings you have on your arms. Did your mommy draw those?”

I didn’t know where Sam was getting this stuff, but I liked it. Killa thought he was tough-and by the looks of him, he probably was, at least in the conventional street sense, which is a different scale-but Sam could put him down without breaking a sweat. That’s the difference between striking fear in someone by looking tough and actually being tough. Killa was probably pretty good at shooting someone in the back of the head, but Sam didn’t even need a gun.

“All right,” I said calmly. “Why don’t we all just sit down and then we can make threats to each other after everyone knows what the score is. Father, why don’t you put your big ass down on a chair, and maybe your buddies will follow suit.”

Father Eduardo, whose face was still bright red from where Sam slapped it, sat down at the table covered with blueprints. Junior and Killa didn’t bother to move.

“Please,” I said to Junior, “you’re my guests here. Have a seat before my guy Finley puts you down.”

Sam cracked his knuckles, but they didn’t make any noise, which sort of understated the effect he was aiming for, so he cracked his neck, too, and it sounded like someone dropped a piano down a flight of stairs. “Ah,” he said, “now I’m loose.”

Junior and Killa exchanged glances and then sat down in the two seats directly in front of the desk, not bothering with the empty sofa. At least they knew they wanted to be in front of me.

“Good,” I said. “Now, I understand you have a proposal for me?”

“Who are you?” Junior said.

“I’m the person who didn’t kill you in your own home,” I said. “But you can call me Solo.”

Junior laughed. “You have balls,” he said. “In here, you have balls. There’s two of you. And maybe you’ve got this snitching priest on your side. So you think, Okay, I got God working for me now, too, in addition to whatever you think you’re going to tell me. But I’ve got an army. You heard? I make a phone call, and I can have two thousand people here. You step outside, you won’t talk to me with such disrespect.”

“I gave you back your phone,” I said. “Why don’t you go ahead and make that call? I’m happy to wait. And while you do that, I’ll have my man Finley here make a call, too, and by the time you’ve hung up, Julia Pistell’s throat will be slit. Nice girl, by the way. Ever met her? Sweet as can be. Yeah, we got her down at the Ace Hotel. She thinks she won a contest through her college. How long you think it will take the police-and not the ones on your measly payroll-to put her dead body and your house together?”

“Who?” Killa said. And when Junior didn’t say anything, he said it again. “Who?”

“Nice you brought your owl with you,” Sam said from the sofa.

“Shut up, Adrian,” Junior said. “I’m trying to think.”

I caught Father Eduardo’s eye. He looked… impressed. But this wasn’t anywhere near over yet.

“You said your name is Solo?” Junior said.

“That’s what I said you could call me,” I said.

“What’s the nature of your business, Solo?”

“My business? You could say I take over distressed companies and then, when they’re profitable, I sell them. Why, you looking for an investor?”

“I guess I’m trying to figure out why you’d align yourself with someone who has a history of selling his partners out.”

“Align? You think this is an alignment? Father Eduardo works for me. You think you’re the only person who ever tried to blackmail someone?” I said. “I understand you want to utilize Father Eduardo’s existing infrastructure to run your business-would that be correct? I know you came in with this revenge-and-reward business, but the truth is that you see a good business model here. Right? Let’s just be honest, businessman to businessman. I’ve done pretty well here, haven’t I?”

“Eduardo is a Latin Emperor,” Junior said. “He may think he serves someone else, but he serves us first. That’s the oath. And he owes me much more.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen the documentaries,” I said. “There was even one you were in. Did you see that one?”

“No,” Junior said.

“Yeah, showed your picture, and then someone with a blurred-out face spent about twenty minutes talking about how you were the toughest SOB in the world and how you ran this and that and the other thing. But, shit, I just thought you looked like a guy who needed some nice Pottery Barn furniture and some chenille rugs.”

I winked at Junior, because when you wink at people, it’s a sign that either you’re insane or you know they’re insane and it’s cool, really.

“Thing is,” I said, “Eduardo has a new boss now. You have a problem with him, you take it up with me, and we’ll see what can be worked out without you getting killed.”

This made Killa laugh. He had an odd sense of humor. But Junior wasn’t amused. “I. Am. Owed.” Each word Junior said was its own sentence.

This day was not going as he had planned, I suspected, and I also suspected he wasn’t used to being challenged. I also had a pretty good idea that if pushed hard enough, he’d try to do something stupid. We hadn’t checked them for guns, but I was sure they were strapped. Or at least Killa was. In a moment, however, Fiona would be here to defuse that problem, if need be.

“You’ve got an outdated business model that needs some tweaking,” I said. “That counterfeiting business you were trying to pull is example A, Your Honor. And this idea that Father Eduardo owes you something? You wipe that clean from your mind. You go to that happy place you live in, with those nice sofas and pieces of art and that gazebo. I really liked that gazebo, Junior. You ever seen his gazebo, Killa?”

“Who the fuck are you?” Killa said. “Who the fuck are these guys, Junior?”

“Shut up, Adrian,” Junior said. Junior inhaled deeply and then tried to relax. “Eduardo belongs to me,” he said to me. “You must understand that.”

“Sure, sure,” I said. “You think I haven’t been in a prison or two? So he snitched you out. Big deal. He fell in love with the Lord-what did you expect? Let’s just get beyond revenge and deal with the tangible, okay? Everything you see here? That’s me. Father Eduardo and I made a deal. He had dreams, and I had means.”