Bullets Are My Business (9781101616413) (18 page)

Inside, Seconds Later

My first reaction is that this has been a setup.

There's no one in sight as I creep into the gym through the unlocked front door. I'm waiting for someone to jump out and beat the living, breathing piss out of me. Or worse. I look cautiously around, at the machines, behind the counter, in the towel room, before standing completely still. My breath ceases altogether. There's not a sound emanating from the weight room.

I wait.

If this is a setup, they would've dropped on me by now. They're too fucking dumb to do anything else. I lower my gun to my side and cock my head. For a moment, there's nothing. No sound at all. Then I hear it. Footsteps. Heels on hardwood. I follow the click-clacking sound through the weight room to the oversized aluminum door. I take a deep breath. There could be just about anything on the other side of this door. I don't particularly want to walk into an ambush. I've seen what these guys can do. But there's no time for thoughts, so I push them from my mind. I gotta move. I kick the door open and shield myself behind the wall.

No shots are fired. This is as safe as it's gonna be. I walk through the doorway and enter the gymnasium. I keep my gun raised.

The first thing I notice is the bound-up girl on the chair in the middle of the gym. At this point, I can only assume that the dark figures flanking her on either side are Megan and Bruiser. The second thing I notice is the smell of stale sweat. It engulfs my nostrils. My lips curl up in disgust. I knew there was a reason I never went to any basketball games in high school.

The lights in the gym are dimmed. I feel like I'm at a high school dance. The lights cast long gray and black shadows across the scuffed wooden floor. It's tough to differentiate between the shadows. I have no idea who could be standing in the wings. I do a sweep of the room, trying my damndest to see if there's anyone waiting to pounce on me. When I'm mostly convinced that there's no ambush, I return my full attention to Maise.

As I walk toward her, the three figures come into focus. I was right. It is Megan and Bruiser. I give Maise a brief but in-depth once-over. Aside from a few welts on her face and the ropes tied around her arms and legs, she looks otherwise okay. I watch her breasts in her low-cut hooker top. They're moving up and down. She's still breathing. That's just about the best news all day. Now I just have to make sure I keep it that way. I'm hoping that will be the easy part, but I'm sure Megan and Bruiser have other plans.

As if on cue, Megan raises her hand to Maise's temple and I hear the unmistakable sound of a pistol being cocked. She raises her other hand toward me. “Stop right there, Levi. That's as close as you need to get. Slide your piece over here.”

As a rule, I don't kill women. Looking back on all the shit I've gone through in the past few days, however, I consider making an exception. Unfortunately, as much as I'd like to fire off a couple rounds directly into Megan's torso, I can't bring myself to do it. I didn't come this far to see Maise get shot. I set my piece on the ground and kick it in Megan's direction. Megan motions for Bruiser to advance on me. As he starts lurching toward me, my wheels start churning. I have to do something.

“Nothing funny, Levi,” Bruiser warns me. I can tell that Megan has his testicles in her back pocket. He couldn't give less of a crap about me. The only reason he pretends to care if I live or die is because of Megan. She's the key. Bruiser moves up close to me. I can smell the sweat that he's tried to mask with a heavy dose of Brut cologne. All the more reason I'm going to enjoy watching him die.

Bruiser grabs me by the lapels and lands a dirty but solid punch into my solar plexus. I try to withstand it, but I wind up doubling over in agony all the same. It's like being hit by a meteor. I fall to my knees and Bruiser lands a secondary hit on my cheek.

“And a good evening to you too,” I say to him.

Megan lowers the gun from Maise's head. “Levi, Levi, Levi,” she says, shaking her head and clicking her tongue at me.

I hold out my hands apologetically. “I'd call you by name, but I don't have the slightest idea what that is,” I reply.

Megan smiles. “No, you don't,” she tells me, so condescending that I have to fight standing up and punching her out. “And that is completely trivial at the present time.”

“Fair enough.” I'm trying to buy myself some time. I'm not sure what for yet. “What do you say we cut to the chase?”

Megan nods her head. “That's a good idea.” she says. “The faster we cut to the chase, the faster I can go home and clean you off me once and for all.”

“All right, we're in agreement on that. So, why don't you tell me—” I start.

Megan aims the gun at Maise's temple again. “No, Levi, I'm afraid you have the roles a bit reversed,” she coos. “I've got the gun, therefore, I ask the questions. Those are the rules.”

“Fair enough. Go ahead.”

“Do you know why you're here?”

“Because you're too cheap to throw me a real surprise party?” I can tell by the knuckles against the right side of my forehead that this wasn't the response she was she was looking for. Another sucker punch. I shake it off.

“At the risk of sounding foolish,” Megan tells me, “I'm going to ask that you keep your smart-assed remarks locked away. Do you think you can handle that?”

“Locked away,” I respond, “like fucking Fort Knox.”

“Good,” Megan replies, coolly. “Now, I'll ask you again: Do you know why you're here?”

“Excluding my first guess, I have a couple other guesses.”

“Would you care to enlighten us?”

“I'm here because you had your pet gorilla knock Vincent into a graveyard,” I tell her, motioning my head toward Bruiser, “and you didn't realize that there was an eyewitness to your expedition. You knew that someone was looking for Maise, you knew that I would be the one that they'd enlist to find her, and you rode my coattails. Now you're going to kill the only two people who can point you out.” I raise my eyebrows in conclusion.

I can see from Megan's expression that this answer wasn't correct. I cast a glimpse at Bruiser as he tries to make sense of what I've just said. He looks like a monkey doing a math problem. I look back at Megan.

“I don't know what kind of shit you're trying to pull with your fantasy story,” she says slowly, “but whatever it is, it won't work.”

“Maybe this would be easier if we stopped playing twenty fucking questions and you just told me why you brought me here.”

“I brought you here because you killed Vincent Bagliato.”

My mind comes to a grinding halt. I'm fairly certain that everyone in the room can hear the brakes squealing. I feel like I'm having déjà vu. “What are you talking about?”

“You heard what I said,” Megan retorts. I shake my head, trying to clear my thoughts.

“Yeah, I heard you just fine but I have no idea what you're talking about.” The gears start clicking forward again. “Where did you get your information?”

“I was asking around at the bars where Vincent hung out. I had a lead and I was contacted by an interested party.”

“Who?”

“A man who called himself Campbell.”

The name rolls into my eardrums like a hurricane. That dirty son of a bitch. I knew his disappearance was too good to be true. I can feel my rage rising as I think about Campbell. I have to push it from my head. I can't think about him right now. There's no point in delving into the past in the middle of the present situation. I'll look him up if I can get myself out of this mess.

“So, you're in a vendetta kind of mood because Campbell told you that I killed Vincent?” I ask. At this point, I can't even pretend to hide my confusion. “Why do you even care? You were just another one of his girls. One that he slapped to the brink of death.”

Megan grits her teeth and taps Maise's temple with the barrel of the gun. “I have no idea where your information is coming from, Levi, but it appears that a line was crossed somewhere.”

This is getting ridiculous. I can feel the blood pulsing inside my head. I start to get to my feet. Bruiser cracks me between the shoulder blades. I return to my knees. “What do you say you just come out with your story, lady? We could be here all night beating around the bush. You've obviously got something to say, so spit it out. What the hell is going on? Who are you?”

Megan takes a deep breath and glares at me so hard that I can feel her gaze slice through my skin like a bullet. “Vincent was my lover. We had been together for a long time, through all of the bullshit and through all of his fucking around behind my back, but I loved him more than you could ever imagine. He would have never laid a finger on me, you lousy piece of shit. Do you know why? Because I didn't deserve it.” Megan begins tapping Maise's head with the gun. Maise winces. Megan doesn't even notice. Her eyes are burning through me as she continues on. “Everything was going decent until this stupid bitch showed up. She's the one that Vincent knocked around. She dipped her hands where they didn't belong. After that, things started going wrong. We were in a world of trouble. Draven left the business and went straight. He holed up and disappeared. That is, until you and your Mohawked friend led us right to him.”

I can barely wrap my head around what she's spouting off, but somehow all of the pieces are forming together. Megan keeps right on trucking. “When our clientele got pissed, Vincent knew that shit was going sour so he moved me to a different locale, out of harm's way, before he enlisted the services of an Asian and his crew to keep himself protected. The Asian, the fuck-up that he turned out to be, was doing a good job until you showed up, blowing in like the wind, to put a bullet in Vincent.” Megan pauses before moving the gun away from Maise's head and training it on my face.

“Who hired you?” Her voice is so low that it's barely audible. I can do nothing but stare at her. She takes a couple of steps toward me. Her anger rises through her body like a wall of fire before it erupts in a yell over her lips. “Who hired you, you rat bastard?”

“I didn't kill Vincent,” I tell her in a poor attempt to keep her calm. She lunges at me with an animal roar, swinging her gun over her head and crashing it down onto my scalp. I feel the blood begin to pour out of the gash on my hairline. She reverses her momentum and slams the gun into my jaw. I haven't been pistol-whipped in years. It still sucks as much as I remember.

As Megan revs up her arm for a third blow, Maise begins convulsing in the chair. Megan turns to look at her, eyes wide, on the brink of insanity, lips pulled back over her teeth in a demonic snarl. “What do you want, you fucking bitch?”

She lurches away from me, back to Maise's side, and yanks the duct tape from her mouth. Maise lets out a piercing howl that is cut short by Megan's fist. Maise recoils in her chair, inches from toppling over backward. The punch is enough to clear her mind, however, and she shakes her head and takes a gasping breath.

“He couldn't have killed Vincent.”

Megan is shocked by this development. Unfortunately, she must think it's a lie. She places the barrel of the gun against Maise's forehead and pulls the hammer back. “Why's that? And I better like the answer.” Megan looks over her shoulder at me. “You taking this all in, tough guy? Because you're next in line. I've had just about enough of this bullshit.”

I wait for Maise to say something, anything at all, but with the gun barrel pressed against her forehead, Maise's vocal chords tighten. All she can manage is the occasional squeak. Her lips are moving at warp speed. I'm surprised her throat doesn't hemorrhage. I can see Megan's finger starting to tighten on the trigger. It's like watching a sociopathic version of
The Gong Show.
C'mon, Maise, say what you have to say before the timer runs out. You have a fraction of a second. I watch in horror as Maise tries as hard as she can to breathe, trying to make her voice come back and rise to the surface. There's nothing there. Maise is a goner. That means that, by default, I'm a goner too. I start to lunge toward them, hoping that, in a last ditch effort, I can get the gun from Megan before she pulls the trigger. Bruiser knocks me back to the ground with a punch to the kidney. I grit my teeth and wait for the blast.

“He was in the backseat of his car on his way to a doctor.” Maise spits out a chain of pasted-together words. She gasps, breathing in a deep cleansing breath of air, waiting for the gun to be removed from her face. Megan has her jaw set and a look of pure hatred plastered all over her face. She's itching to pull that trigger. She needs to put a name to the hate. Any name will do at this point. Maise's is just in the wrong spot.

“Megan . . .” I start. Megan turns on her heels and once again aims the gun at me. At least it's not on Maise anymore. Bruiser lands another hit on the side of my face. I'm starting to get tired of this.

“Shut your mouth, you murdering son of a bitch,” Bruiser growls. I keep my focus on the unblinking eye that is the barrel of the gun pointed at me.

“I didn't kill him.” I'm talking to both parties now. Neither one seems thrilled with my response. Megan walks toward me, clenching her teeth. I can see the muscles in her jaw as they tighten.

“If you didn't kill him, then who did?”

“I haven't the slightest idea.” I shake my head.

Megan motions with her head toward Maise. “Does that little bitch?” Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Bruiser getting ready to wind up again.

“Bruiser, you're going to regret every single hit you've planted on me tonight.” I can tell that, for a second or two, he's seriously considering this, but his thought process fades. He punches me anyway. Megan snaps her fingers at Bruiser and points at Maise.

“Find out what she knows.” A smile spreads across Bruiser's face like cancer. He pops his knuckles. Megan keeps her piece leveled on me. She knows that if she moves it away for an instant, I'm going to act. She knows there'll be bloodshed if she doesn't keep tabs on me. She also knows that I can't dodge a bullet.