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  The maître d’s eyes flickered. “Yes, sir. Right this way.”

  We walked through the crowded kitchen, past steaming vats of pasta and pans of frying veal. The maître d’ led me to a private room tucked away just behind the dessert station. Inside the room was a long mahogany table with six chairs. I grabbed a seat and wondered how long I’d have to wait.

  The answer: not long. Four minutes after I sat down, Tommy came storming into the kitchen, and he didn’t look happy. He looked like I felt: tired and hot and pissed off. “My phone’s been ringing off the hook all afternoon. What the fuck happened?”

  I wanted to reach across the table and wring Tommy’s fat, sweaty neck. Instead I calmly sipped my water. “There was a problem.”

  “Yeah, I’ll say there was a fucking problem! I got one guy with his guts blown out all over the floor, I got another guy in the hospital with his head smashed in, and I got you sittin’ there drinking fucking ice water. Where’s my fucking money?”

  Breathe in, breathe out. Maintain.

  “We didn’t get your money. Your boy Sully was too busy going apeshit with a baseball bat.”

  I filled Tommy in. My voice was calm. Just the facts, ma’am.

  At the end of it Tommy didn’t look happy, but he did look a little sheepish. “Really? He just started swinging?”

  “That’s right. Look, my fingerprints are in that van.”

  “Relax. My guys at the wrecking yard towed it. It’s been crushed into a cube.”

  “And the old man?”

  “He won’t say shit.”

  I leaned back and let myself breathe.

  Tommy shook his head. “Jack, you worry too much.”

  “That’s why you hired me.”

  Deep down, though, I knew Tommy was right. I never used to worry about shit like that. I’d go in like a ton of bricks, do the job and split. Let someone else worry about mopping up.

  I leaned toward Tommy. “You’ve got a problem. You’ve got weightlifters, and what you need are diplomats. I can’t work with these guys. They’re half gorilla, half steroids. I know, I know, they’re perfectly nice guys and you’ve known them since grade school and they bring the best potato salad to the company picnic, but I’m telling you, they’re not the right guys for the job.”

  An aging waiter brought over trays of meat. Tommy slowly cut a piece of veal. He brought a forkful to his mouth and chewed it slowly, contemplatively. “See, Jack? This is why I like you. You’re not afraid to tell it like it is. Some of these guys, I tell ’em up is down and they all wag their tails like puppies. ‘Sure thing, boss! Up is down, boss!’ That kind of thinking, it’s not good. That kind of thinking can doom an entire organization. But you … you’ve got a clean mind. You’re a breath of fresh air.” Tommy’s knife and fork clattered to his plate. “Tell me what you need and I’ll make it happen.”

  “I’ll do your routes for you. Let me bring in a couple of my own guys.”

  “Nuh-uh. No way. Why don’t I just hand over the combination to my safe? The keys to my safe deposit box?” Tommy leaned closer. “You gotta understand, Jack, in a business like mine there’s certain, whatchacall, proprietary information that shouldn’t fall into the wrong hands.”

  “I understand. Here’s something else I understand: you need your money. You don’t trust your own people to get it for you. So where does that leave us?”

  Tommy hemmed and hawed over his last scraps of veal. He turned and beckoned the waiter closer. “What does this look like, Mothers Against Drunk Driving? Get us some more fucking wine.”

  I saw my face reflected in Tommy’s eyes as he stared across the table. I looked like shit.

  “You sure you can keep your guys in line?”

  “Don’t worry about that.” I grinned and cracked my knuckles. “Management is my forte.”

  CHAPTER 5

  I was nine years old when I first started taking karate. I hated it. All that bowing and scraping. For my mom it was an excuse to get me out of the house and be around a “positive male role model.” Our sensei was a fucking tyrant. I swear he enjoyed hurting little kids. Grinning as he stood over me writhing on the mat, my arm broken.

  When I was ten I won my first tournament. My mother wasn’t there. I found her later passed out on our apartment couch, an empty tequila bottle keeping the empty beers company. I took no pleasure in the roar of the crowd, all those smiling faces, all those happy moms and dads. I hated the smug look on the sensei’s face as he bowed to me, as if to say, “See, you little shit? I’m the best fucking karate teacher there is and you had better fucking believe it.” I hated the stiff fabric of my karate gi, the strange plastic smell of the gym mats, the stinging chemical fizz of an orange soda someone’s dad bought me afterward.

  I remember a lot about that day. What I remember most is the look on the other kid’s face as I swept his legs out from under him. Surprise at first, wide-eyed surprise, and then, as I moved in to finish him, a flicker of recognition. He knew he was beaten before he even hit the mat. He knew I had beaten him.

  The look in that kid’s eyes — that, I liked.

  CHAPTER 6

  It’s just like riding a bike. Once you learn how to cut someone’s throat with a set of keys, it’s not something you’re going to forget. I learned this trick from my good pal Grover. Remember those old Charles Atlas ads in the comic books? Ninety-eight-pound weakling on the beach gets sand kicked in his face by a big beach bully. Weakling gets pissed off, sends away for Charles Atlas’s bodybuilding device (The Secrets of DYNAMIC-TENSION: Atlas’s device was basically nothing but a giant spring) and bulks up and then kicks some serious ass. My buddy Grover was the before picture. Guy weighed about ninety-five pounds and he wore a bow tie. But he was one of the deadliest humans I knew, and no one ever took him seriously until it was too late.

  Grover took the tiny paper umbrella out of his third margarita and took a sip. Salt crystals clung to his sandy-brown moustache. We had been sitting on the patio of this Tex-Mex place on Baldwin Street for about three hours, shooting the shit and watching the world go by.

  “You ever think about retiring, Jack?”

  “Shit. Do I look that bad?”

  We both laughed, but it wasn’t funny.

  “Look at me.” Grover spread his skinny arms wide, causing his white linen suit jacket to fall open. “I’ve never felt better. I’ve got some money, my health, and a sweet gal. We sit in my boat, drink beer, and go fishing. When it starts getting cold, we pull up the anchor and haul ass toward warmer weather.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t like fish.”

  Grover sucked salt from his moustache and leaned closer. “You’ve changed, Jack. I don’t know what it is exactly, but you’ve changed. I can see it in your eyes.”

  “Contacts,” I said.

  This time nobody laughed.

  “I sent you letters, you know. When you were Inside. Did you get them?”

  “Yeah, I got them.”

  “You didn’t write back.”

  “I know. I should’ve sent a postcard. ‘Wish you were here.’”

  “You know, Jack, some people use humour as a shield.”

  “Is that right? That’s really fucking interesting.”

  “Why’d you call me down here?”

  Enough bullshit. “I need to see The Chief.”

  Grover shook his head, finished his margarita, stood up, and threw fifty bucks on the table. “I’ll see what I can do. Hey, Jack.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You don’t really wear contacts, do you?”

  “Nope.”

  Grover squinted in the sunlight, staring out into some middle distance. “I got this old camping cooler that I keep on the deck of my boat, right by my fishing chair. I keep it stocked with ice and grape soda and at least twelve beers at all times. I’m saving those beers for you, Jack. Come get them sometime.”

  Then he was gone, just a little man in a white suit, fading into the crowd.

  C
HAPTER 7

  I met The Chief on one of my last legit security jobs. He and I were added at the last minute to the security detail surrounding a multinational entertainment company’s latest product to roll off the teen idol assembly line: three fresh-faced, non-threatening boys who could sing like angels.

  You couldn’t hear anything over the screams and shrieks of the basically all-female crowd. An ocean of arms, all with outstretched hands and cameras and posters, all desperately reaching out toward the boys as they walked the red carpet in front of MuchMusic. It was fucking crazy.

  The Chief was out front — “on point,” as they say in the military — then came the fresh-faced boys and their regular security goons. I tagged along, bringing up the rear. Suddenly, this freak with a knife tried to jump the fence. Back then I thought I was fast, but The Chief was there before me, hands moving in a hummingbird blur, breaking the guy’s arm in three different places. The Chief caught the knife before it hit the red carpet and handed it to me: “Here.” Then he hauled the guy to the ground, snapped the cuffs on him, and hustled him away before the cameras and the news crews even realized what was happening.

  After the concert, with the boys tucked safely away while the roadies dismantled the gear and tried to score with the groupies, The Chief cocked his head toward me and said “Let’s grab a beer.”

  We didn’t go far. The Chief had parked his car in the MuchMusic parking lot. He plopped down in the driver’s seat, grabbed two beers from the cooler in the back, and grinned. “That was something, wasn’t it? An ocean of girls.”

  “I’ve got a girlfriend.”

  The Chief snorted. “The boys don’t. Not if you believe the press releases. They say they’re saving themselves for marriage.” The Chief guffawed. “Freakin’ altar boys move more product — keychains and teddy bears and shit. The corporation’s got an image to uphold.”

  The Chief killed his bottle and then unscrewed his silver flask. “Whisky?”

  “No thanks.”

  “You smoke crack?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Reefer? Uppers? Downers? Leapers? Screamers?”

  I held out my bottle. “I like beer.”

  The Chief laughed. “Me too, kid. You ever break any legs?”

  “I broke my arm once.”

  “No, not your legs. Other people’s.”

  Finally I caught his drift. “Like for money?”

  “That’s right.”

  I shook my head. “Nope.”

  The Chief grinned. “Would you like to?”

  It didn’t go quite like that, of course. There’s the obligatory song-and-dance. You’ve got to get to know a person a little bit before you ask them to break someone’s bones.

  “Do you agree there are people in this world whose legs need breaking? Speaking hypothetically, of course.”

  “Of course, I mean, yes. I agree.”

  “Then it stands to reason that there are people who must break those legs. Right?”

  “Well … I guess. But those people don’t have to be me.”

  “You’re right about that, kid. But think about this. You’re performing a valuable service. We’re not talking about civilians here. You aren’t walking into the family butcher shop and taking out Grampa. These are degenerates we’re talking about. Thieves. Drug addicts. Compulsive gamblers.”

  “Those people need help.”

  “That’s right. That’s exactly right. And that’s what we do. We help them realize they’ve got to straighten up and fly right. Nothing like lying in an alleyway screaming in agony with your legs broken to help you see the error of your ways.”

  “But you’re working for gangsters.”

  The Chief leaned back, his face half-hidden in shadow. “I had an epiphany a few years back, kid. I was sitting in my trailer drinking a G&T and watching a show about monkeys. Apes, really. Chimpanzees. The British voice-over was droning on about how these apes get organized. Basically they form a gang with the alpha chimp on top. Chimps are our closest animal relatives, did you know that? So it makes sense that we’re no different. That’s how all of society works. It’s all gangs. You got your corporations fighting each other. Each one is a gang. You got gangs of cops fighting gangs of crooks. Think about a university. Each department is a gang fighting for funding. It’s all gangs, each one with an alpha chimp on top.”

  The Chief’s silver flask gleamed in the moonlight as he tilted it back. “And if it’s all gangs, then we’re all gangsters.”

  CHAPTER 8

  I was on the roof with Eddie Yao, perched on a rusted and busted lawn chair, the kind with the green and white plastic latticework, both of us kicking back and sipping a few beers in the splendour of the asphalt beach while down in the alley below two dogs were yowling and snarling and trying to tear each other a new asshole.

  Eddie finished his beer, set the bottle down, and looked over at me. The sun was setting, disappearing pale pink and purple behind the rooftops. Eddie was still wearing his sunglasses. “You like dogs?”

  I leaned back and grinned. “You know me, Eddie. I love all of God’s creatures.”

  “You’re a lover, not a fighter.”

  We both burst out laughing.

  Eddie snapped his fingers. “That guy called for you. Tommy.”

  “Oh yeah?” I reached out my hand and Eddie slapped his phone into my palm. In the darkness the phone looked different. No, wait … it was different.

  “You get a new phone?”

  Eddie snorted. “Because of you I have to keep chucking them in the lake.”

  The wind whipped through my hair as I walked out toward the edge of the roof. From there I could see the blinking lights on the CN Tower, warning airplanes to back the fuck off.

  As I punched in Tommy’s number I wondered if he threw his phones into the lake, too. He wasn’t exactly a cautious guy. In fact, you could sum up his credo with a T-shirt slogan I saw once writ large across the belly of a slouchy teen: I Don’t Give a Fuck.

  Tommy picked up and just started talking. “So I’m on my fifth Scotch and soda when suddenly it hits me. I haven’t heard from my pal recently. My good pal Jack.”

  Tommy was slurring his words but I caught the menace in his voice. He was at the club. Eddie’s phone throbbed with bass.

  “So where the fuck are you, Jack? Didn’t we have a meeting scheduled?”

  “Um … no, I don’t think so.”

  Tommy was talking but he wasn’t talking to me. “Leave that. Leave the whole fucking bottle. What’s that, Jack?”

  “I said I’m on my way.”

  The cab cut through Clubland, past lineups of beefy guys with gold chains and gel in their hair and skinny gals with sparkly silver tops and micro-miniskirts, rubbing their bare arms against the evening chill.

  The cabbie, big guy in a newsie cap, shook his head and let loose a grunt. “Damn shame. All these young girls done lost their pants.”

  The cabbie grinned at me in the rear-view mirror and I knew he was waiting for me to laugh. Sorry, my man — not tonight. Tonight Tommy was both pissed and pissed off, which meant anything could happen.

  I got off about two blocks from the club, stepping onto the sidewalk just as a police horse took a huge steaming crap at the intersection. The light turned green and the mounted cop trotted off, past the lineups thrumming with anticipation. Everyone was happy, but I knew how this game ended: Last Call and then 2:00 a.m. and the clubs vomit out the stragglers, all those guys with gold chains who came in from the suburbs to get laid and instead got shot down again and again and now they’re boozed up and angry, beer and testosterone coursing through their veins, surging onto the streets with their fists clenched because, hey, if you can’t fuck, you might as well fight.

  At Tommy’s club a fat man with a shaved head stopped me at the door. He must be a real cool guy because he was wearing black pants, black shirt, black tie, and a headset. Two huge guys stood behind him with their giant arms crossed, flanking the doorway lik
e Greek pillars.

  Headset turned up his nose at my sweatshirt and rumpled pants.

  “This is the Red Carpet Entrance.”

  I grinned and pointed to the ground. “That explains the red carpet.”

  The fat man cocked his head. “There’s another door over there.”

  Time was I would’ve taken this guy’s headset and made him eat it. Then I would’ve gone loco on the two guys behind him. But I’ve matured. That kind of shit, as good as it may feel, doesn’t get you where you want to go. That’s the kind of shit that lands you in jail.

  Instead I got right up into Headset’s face and I smiled. “I’m a friend of Tommy’s.”

  “Name?”

  I kept smiling. In a quiet, even voice I said, “My name is ‘Tommy is going to cut your balls off with razor wire if you don’t get the fuck out of my way.’ Go on, check your list. Should be on there.”

  Headset’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Name?”

  “Jack. Jack Palace.”

  A quick scan of the list and Headset stepped aside. “Go right in, sir.”

  I stepped through the door and the metal detector started to kick up a ruckus. Headset waved me back. Shit, I thought. The fucking knives.

  Headset’s huge buddy shook his head. “Forget it. Let him through.”

  “But —”

  “Listen to your boy, Headset.”

  Headset glowered as I breezed through the door.

  ________

  Tommy was flying high when I saw him, a wild shock of receding hair bolting straight up from his head, his pupils like pinpricks, sweat running down his face. His Hawaiian shirt hung open, buttons either undone or missing. Four deeply tanned party girls clustered around him, two servers bringing champagne by the bottleful.

  “Jack! About fucking time. Come on.” Without waiting for a response, Tommy turned around, his arms and legs jerking like a Claymation cartoon. He moved off toward a circular staircase leading up to another level of the club. The party girls obediently trailed behind.

  Outside the door to his private office, Tommy lurched around and growled at the girls. “Beat it.” He reached out and caught one of them by the wrist. “Not you. Get in here. You, too, Jack.”