A stool pigeon. We didn’t like those in my trade, so I felt a bit better about rubbing her out. As long as I kept reminding myself my alternative was New Mexico.
I cringed while cleaning my bullet wound in the bathroom mirror. That would leave quite a fucking scar. That was good. It would make me look nastier.
I tried not to think about that dead Lieutenant Commander. I wondered what a woman named Flavia Brooks was doing making meth in a warehouse. From the photo, she didn’t look very Hispanic, although I could be wrong. And with flawless skin like that, she was no meth head. She was smiling, as though someone she liked had taken the photo, but showing no teeth. I could tell, though, if she had meth mouth. She didn’t.
I enlarged the photo. It looked like she was wearing a white lab coat. What the hell? You didn’t generally need to look so professional to work in an enclosed meth lab. She clasped what looked like a clipboard to her chest, and there were test tubes and vials and general chemistry type stuff, blurry in the distance behind her. Did she have something to do with the murder of the Lieutenant Commander?
It would probably be easiest if I buried her from a distance. Use my M24 with the scope and get on some roof across from the party rental place. Another favorite of my trade was popping someone off at a traffic light. I could call in a few guys I knew to pretend to panhandle at a light. My Harley was good for those quick getaways, and I had a variety of license plates I could swap.
Flavia was running around free after the warehouse bust, so I imagined she used a different name now. I was overthinking this. I went down to the lobby to get some Band-Aids. I got a hip flask of whisky from my saddlebags. I knew I’d need it to sleep, as well as clean my wound, to forget about the woman I was supposed to bury. Sicarios were heartless bastards. All the others that I knew certainly were, except maybe the happy-go-lucky Santiago Slayer. I needed to become a hell of a lot more unfeeling if I wanted to stay on this career trajectory.
The Bum Steer was about as dark and divey as you’d expect a biker bar to be, except the smoke you smelled was years old from before they changed the indoor smoking ordinance.
“I’d rather not let anyone know who I work for,” I told Slayer out front.
He held up patient hands. “I don’t blame you one bit. That is your personal information to share. And in turn, I appreciate if you do not steal any business from me. They want someone put on ice, that is my job.”
“Understood.” I had plenty of work without poaching any from Slayer. And if Jones heard I was doing any rat jobs, I’d be the one in the soup pot. “I’m just here to relax and see the sights.”
He pointed at me as we headed inside. “Which is really what you’re here to do,” he said, as though reaffirming it.
“Of course,” I said cheerfully.
“Well then, this is the man you want to meet!” Slayer yelled as he swept dramatically into the biker bar. I didn’t expect the mild-mannered, blinking guy with a pool stick in his hand. His airy red afro made him look like Ronald McDonald, and I’m the last to make fun of gingers. But really, his skin was so pale, he was whiter than Mitt Romney in a snowstorm. And way less dangerous.
“This is Kneecap,” explained Slayer, displaying the clown as though he were a game show refrigerator. “He runs the indoor archery range that you see across the street. There is nothing better for relaxation, while scoring a bunch of bullseyes, of course.”
I nodded. In Nogales I had done some archery during my downtime. It seemed to go hand in hand with falconry. You know, stepping through the tall grass with a quiver and bow strapped to your torso, a peregrine falcon sitting on your gauntlet. But I didn’t really want to shoot at the moment—I wanted to check out the lay of the land, so I went over to the guy playing pool with Kneecap and reached out to shake his hand.
“Fox Isherwood,” I told him.
The guy looked at my hand as though it were a turd. “I don’t know you.”
He was stating the obvious. I could’ve come back with something like, “And that’s why I’m introducing myself,” but I knew to step carefully around outlaw types. Verbal debate and banter was one of my tools of the trade, but something told me to go lightly with this one.
Slayer came in for the save. “I’m sorry. Forgive me for being rude. Lytton, this is Fox Isherwood. He works in, ah, the same sort of industry that I do.”
Lytton lightened up considerably. He even shook my hand now. “Ah! That explains it. Where were you guys—at a gun show?”
“A hitman convention,” goofed Kneecap.