Brent was halfway through his coffee when he looked up past me and went a little pale.
“Is Amy behind me?” I asked suspiciously. He shook his head. Which meant it was probably…
“Brent! Shades! How you guys doin’?” a voice said behind me. I turned around to find two rather tall, trench coat clad men grinning at me.
“Tony. Guido,” I answered in greeting. Brent gave them a nervous wave.
“We were wondering when you guys would show up,” Tony announced. “Scoot over, will ya?”
I shifted left on the bench, making room for Tony. Brent did the same for Guido. The two sat down, obliviously cheerful to their interruption. So much for a peaceful meal, I thought.
Antonio and Guido Sciacchitano. Those are their real names; I’ve seen their licenses. They were a pair of ‘bond officers’, a polite term for bounty hunters, who did the occasional bouncer gig because of the money it pays. Which means that usually they really are packing heat and, proving society’s total failure, they’re licensed to do it. I’m not certain how or why they ended up in this small-time city but they had managed to land a few cushy, weekend jobs at some of the more high-end clubs in town, which is how they paid rent. They ate and bought expensive coats by bringing in people who had jumped bail. I hadn’t asked how they afforded their car, and I’m not really planning to. I had more or less made their acquaintance while drinking too much a few months ago and Tony’s been clapping my back ever since.
Tony made himself comfortable beside me and clasped his hands together in front of him. “So, what brings you out tonight? Doesn’t look like you’re drinking much. Is somethin’ up?”
Brent grinned to be friendly, but ever since I told him they were armed he’s been nervous around them. “Nah, nothing much.”
“Nothin’? Really, that’s good. You guys ever have a problem, you come see me, got it?” He pointed to his chest. “I’ll take care of it.”
Well, he offered. “Actually, there was something,” I said. “We’re trying to figure out what to do about a gun.”
“A gun!” Tony’s eyes widened a little. He motioned us to lean closer. “You guys shouldn’t be thinking about a gun! You should stay clear of that stuff! You need someone taken out? I know some people who can take care of it. Fifty dollars, that’s it, and we didn’t hear nothin’.”
“Forty,” Guido piped up.
Tony glared at him. “You undercuttin’ me?”
“Sorry.”
Tony looked back at us. “Okay, thirty. But that’s only ‘cause we’re pals.” He sat back. “But I gotta tell ya, Brent, if it’s Amy, I can’t do it. I know she’s a bitch and all, but it goes against my principles to-”
“No, no,” I waved him down. “We don’t need to get a gun. We have one. We’re trying to get rid of it.”
“You have one?”
“Yeah, we-”
“What do you mean she’s a bitch?”
Tony looked at Brent, a little embarrassed. “Well, you know, she always had this attitude, and you were so pussy-whipped-”
Guido gave Tony a kick.
“I mean, uh, you were just always doing whatever she asked. And you were always, like, ‘yes dear,’ like you were some purse flapping fag or-”
“Tony!” I hissed.
“But uh, you know….” He floundered a bit. “I meant it in a good way?”
I didn’t say anything, just clenched my forehead in my hands. Why they let this guy carry a gun is beyond me.
Brent had gone even paler than before. “You mean she…”
“No, he didn’t,” I snapped at him before he could finish. “Now be quiet for a minute and let me take care of this.” Brent scowled but didn’t argue the point.
“So, anyway,” I said, directing Tony’s attention back to me before he said anything else stupid. “We have this gun. You don’t want it. Do you?”
He looked at me suspiciously. “Did you use it on someone?”
I sighed. What else could I have expected? “No we didn’t.” I quickly told him how we had acquired the gun, creatively enough that Brent was angry before I even finished.
Tony looked surprised. “So you took the gun?”
“That’s exactly what I said!” I shook my head. “Really, I can’t believe it.”
Tony nodded. “Yeah, I know.” He looked over at Brent and gave him a thumbs up. “Smart move. I wouldn’t have pegged you for it.”
I decided not to press the point. “If you want it we’ll just give it to you.”
Tony frowned. “Another gun might be a bit, uh, problematic right now, if you know what I mean. What kind of gun is it? Revolver or automatic? Is it a magnum?”
I thought about it for a minute. “When you pull the trigger, it fires.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything. It’s a hand gun, right?”
“Yeah, I guess. It’s no rifle or anything.”
“Okay,” Tony said. With surprising deftness, he pulled his gun from his coat. “Does it look like this?”
Guido’s eyes went wide and he jumped across the table, trying to shove the loaded gun back down.
“Relax, relax,” Tony said, still grinning confidently. “I’m keepin’ it low.”
“They sell beer here!” Guido hissed.
“Oh, yeah,” Tony said and the gun disappeared. “Did you get a look at it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And does the gun you have look like it?”
“Uh-uh.”
“At all?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Hmm… It’s probably a revolver then. I don’t really like them that much.” He thought for another second. “Sorry, man, but that’s just more trouble than its worth right now.”
“Right. But… uh… what do we do with it, then?”
Tony’s face twisted as he mulled it over, getting progressively more and more warped until he spouted out, about a minute later, “You could always ask the guy in the back.”
“Him?” I asked skeptically. “I feel like a sucker for just considering it.”
Tony shook his head vigorously. “Seriously, man, you should think about it. The guy knows everything. He’s the one that told me I should move here.”
Great credentials, I’m sure. “That’s it?”
Tony shrugged. “If I don’t need a gun, I usually don’t go and get one.” He leaned back in his chair and was silent for a good twenty seconds. Suddenly, his face lit up. “No, wait, I know what you could do!” he said excitedly. “You could grab the gun and then head to the local high school!”
“You mean the one downtown?”
“Right, they have this door in the back. It’ll be locked, but just shoot through the handle and it’ll swing right open! You’ll only have around twenty seconds after that, but if you’re fast, you’ll be fine. So you run in, throw the gun in a locker, then run out. Some guards might come running at that point. Once you get past them and by any other fuzz that shows up, you go home and lay low until the morning. Then you call up the FBI’s gun line, tell ‘em which locker it’s in, and then they pay you five hundred dollars!” Tony finished with a stupid grin on his face.
I raised an eyebrow. “That’s quite a plan. Did ‘Uncle Louie’ come up with that?”
“Nah,” he answered proudly. “I came up with that one myself.”
“Excuse me,” a waitress said, cutting Tony off before he could say anything else stupid and me before I could say anything rude. Tony leaned back, partly to give her room to put our pizzas down and partly to ogle her. She was polite enough to pretend not to notice.
“Thanks,” Brent said as she left.
“Pizza?” Tony said shaking his head. “That’s not real pizza. You should come visit me some time, and I’ll have my sister show you real pizza. Not this junk.” Tony scowled at our meal. “It pains me to see you guys eating like this. You know what you guys need? You guys need a nice girl who can cook for you.”
Brent flinched a little, and Tony looked at him, confused, before he realized he had stuck his foot in his mouth.
“Oh, man. I’m sorry,” he said. “Thinking before I speak, again.” He slapped the table. “Hey, look, its okay. You’re better off without her. Uncle Louie always told me it’s better to be single when you’re young, and he’s right. Girls are nothin’ but trouble. Like, I had this girl a couple years ago. Callin’ me all the time. Comin’ over all the time to cook. Takin’ up all the room in the bed. It was hell, man, I tell you.”
“I’m sure it was,” Brent grated out through clenched teeth.
“Oh, like you wouldn’t believe,” Tony went on cheerfully. “And there was this other girl. Touchin’ me all the time, no sex, though we did that some too. Just hugging me, and kissing me, and rubbing my shoulders. It’s like, I come home from dragging some guy’s sorry ass back to jail, and I want a Martini and a good show on TV, not some woman pawing at my back.
“I mean, seriously, am I a man or not? And every girl I’ve had was like that, clingy, and talking, and wanting attention. And it seems like I’ve had dozens of these girls. But I tell you the worst.” He leaned forward to make sure we were listening. “The worst was this girl I was dating for the last three months. I dumped her, just couldn’t deal with her. She was always pressing me about when our anniversary was, and were we going to get married, and always wanted to sleep over. I couldn’t get any privacy, man, it was horrible. And not even a diamond ring would shut her up. Just made her worse. ‘Oh, I love you so much.’ And that bullshit. Just had to drop, her man. It was just too much.”
Tony leaned back in his chair. “Like my Uncle Louie always said, a man’s gotta have man time, y’know? So see?” he said, finishing his point. “Women are just trouble, I tell you. Lay ‘em and leave ‘em, that’s what Uncle Louie always said.”
Brent stood up, smacking the table with his palm, glaring down at Tony. He seemed about to say something, but then he just turned and stalked off, almost knocking Guido out of the way as he did.
Tony looked around dumbfounded. “What’d I say?”
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