Victor Gischler - Gun Monkeys

I sized up the two guys with him. Both trouble, but for different reasons. I didn’t know them, but I could tell the type.

The first guy was short and twitchy. Bland, clammy face under a dishwater haircut. His eyes pinballed around the room, not really taking anything in, hand clenching and unclenching the whole time he stood swaying next to Beggar. His hand jerked up to his nose every few seconds, tweaking it between thumb and forefinger. Coke-head. You could spot one a mile away, and dangerous. Either Beggar didn’t know, or he didn’t care that he had a man under him who could go squirrelly at a moment’s notice.

Unlike the coke-head, the other guy was dangerous by design. He was tall and Aryan, blond and stiff. Young. Wore an expensive black suit, purple shirt and tie. He was hard and cold, and his jacket bulged in the right places.

Stan broke off from his guests and motioned to me.

I told the boys to pack up the game for the night and met Stan in the center of the room.

“Tell Amber to come up to the office and see what everyone wants to drink,” said Stan. He tapped his chest and gave me a wink.

He had the wire on. I nodded.

Stan led his guests upstairs where he had a boardroom with a table and enough chairs to accommodate everyone comfortably. I sent for Amber, told her to hustle it up and see what everyone wanted to drink.

I told Bob and Benny to get home.

“What’s the deal?” Bob Tate had a big worried look on his mug.

“Ask me again tomorrow.”

Bob nodded, gave Benny an elbow nudge. “Let’s go.”

I told Lou to keep an eye on things out front.

I waited until he was gone then slipped on the ear-piece.

“- young lady can get us some drinks,” Stan was saying.

I imagined them up there. Stan and Larry and Jimmy at one end of the table, Beggar and his boys at the other, everyone wearing big phony smiles. I didn’t like the idea of the guy in the purple tie being up there. He was strictly enforcement. If he was up there I felt like I should’ve been too. Too bad. I didn’t make those decisions.

“No drinks.” Beggar. “If I wanted drinks, I’d go get drinks. I’m here to talk business. I’m going to talk quick so I think you better listen.”

Stan sent Amber out. I adjusted the volume.

“Okay, Beggar. What brings you all the way up from Miami? What couldn’t be handled with a phone call? You wanted us to run down Rollo for you. We done it. What else?”

“How old are you, Stan?”

A pause.

“What the hell is this?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” said Beggar. “I have nothing but respect for what you’ve accomplished here. You’ve done a hell of a job. Nobody could have run Orlando like you. Especially in the old days. But this ain’t the old days anymore. Things change. It gets tougher and tougher to keep business at the level it used to be at.”

“The hell you say.” Stan. “I run a tight ship. You got complaints? Let’s hear them.”

“This isn’t just me saying this, Stan. It’s come straight down the chain. You’re sitting on a big fat apple here in Orlando. Hotels, bars, Disney sitting over there like a big, ripe plum. Every hotel should be using the laundry service you tell them to. Every bar should be on to your beverage service. You’ve maintained well here, Stan, but the town’s expanded these last ten years. You haven’t. It’s a juicy territory, and you’re not squeezing hard enough.”

Stan made a disgusted noise in his throat. “And who can squeeze harder? You, I suppose.”

“I suppose I could.”

“So I’m out with the bathwater, am I?”

“It’s not like that. Nobody wants to put you out to pasture. Just let me move some of my people up here, show you how to shake a few more leaves off the money tree.”

“Bullshit. You think I don’t know the slow squeeze when I see it.”

“I told you,” said Beggar. “Nobody wants to squeeze you out.” He lowered his voice. “But it can get tough if you want to play it tough.”

Stan muttered something I couldn’t catch. “Okay. What am I supposed to do?”

“Good,” said Beggar. “You’re doing the right thing. First we need a favor.”

“What?”

“There’s a guy up here. In your town. Took some stuff that ain’t his. I need you to go over and make him unhappy.”

“Seems like all your problems run up here to Orlando.”

“Can I count on you or not?” asked Beggar.

“Why me?”

“He’s meeting one of your boys. Donovan.”

“Small time. Owns a titty bar. A nobody. So what?”

“We know he’s nobody,” said Beggar. “That’s why we figured you wouldn’t mind giving him up.”

Stan sighed heavy and ragged, the sound of his soul being pulled up though his throat, the sound of our world changing forever.

Stan had watched everyone go,watched Beggar glide out like the angel of doom back to his ivory tower. I told Lou to lock up then take a hike. Stan’s driver-bodyguard waited in Stan’s Fleetwood, so it was just me and him sitting around the Monopoly table in the monkey cage.

“Get a bottle,” he said.

“Of what?”

“Whatever. Bring two glasses.”

I fetched a bottle of Chivas, straddled my chair backwards. I leaned forward, filled each glass a third full.

He sipped. I sipped. We sat.

Finally he said, “You heard all that?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you size it up? The situation.”

“They’re handing you a big shit sandwich,” I said.

Stan nodded. Smiled. Not a happy smile. A might-as-well-get-used-to-taking-it-up-the-ass smile. “You have a good way with words, Charlie. Charlie the Hook. Anybody still call you that?”

“Hardly anybody.”

He scratched his head. “How’d you get that nickname? Been so long, I forgot.”

“I killed a man with a boat hook once.”

He chuckled. “Oh yeah.” He’d been forgetting a lot lately.

He finished the Chivas, coughed a little. “I don’t really drink anymore. Eighty-one years old. Believe that shit? All I’ve lived through, and it’s drinking and smoking and cholesterol and shit I have to worry about. Fuck.”

Yeah.

“But tonight-” He tapped his glass. I poured it a third full again. “- tonight I need a drink.”

“Sure, Stan.”

He drank. I drank. We still sat.

I cleared my throat some, kind of looked at him.

“Go ahead and ask,” he said.

“What do we do?”

“Right now we do nothing. We toe the line. You know Kyle Donovan?”

Not personally, but I’d been listening on the wire. “Owns a titty bar called Toppers on Orange Blossom Trail. He answers to you?”

“He’s pretty far down the food chain,” said Stan. “He answers to people who pay me for the honor of doing business in my neighborhood.”

“Who do you want me to take along?”

“Who do you need?”

I only thought a second. “Bob and Benny to cover the doors. I’ll go in myself after hours. I’ll leave New Guy to watch out for things here.”

“New Guy? Who the fuck’s that?”

“Lou Morgan. The huge guy. Muscles.”

“Don’t worry about that. I want you to call Benny and Bob. I want you taking care of this tonight before Beggar heads back for Miami.”

“Tonight?”

“What’s that? Some kind of problem?”

“No problem, Stan.”

“Good. Nobody gets out. Got it? If it moves, it’s dead.”

“I got it.”

“Now listen, Charlie. This is the important part. There’s a black, eel-skin briefcase with the initials A. A. Combination locked. Grab it. Turn the place inside out if you have to but put the snatch on it top priority, capiche ? Beggar wants the case taken to Alan Jeffers.”