Palmer and I show Maya the way to the café. You’d think in a giant warehouse the best we might have rigged up would just be a few spool-shaped tables and some benches, but no. Some of the boys have gone the full nine miles on the place, and it shows - nice furniture, dim lights, and a six hundred dollar espresso machine you can get things like mint and cinnamon out of.
“That’s not half bad,” is the best I can get out of Maya. Still, it’s a compliment.
“We’re not going to be long.”
“You’ve already said that, sweetheart.”
“And I mean it.”
Palmer’s standing right behind me but what the hell, I’m not going to pass up a chance for one of her kisses if I’ve got a breath left in me. Then I turn and follow Palmer up the staircase, to the third floor.
“So that’s what they call bodyguard work,” he says. “For bonuses like that, you ought to be taking bullets.”
“I’m never doing that again.”
“Kirill’t say never, hotshot. Not until we’ve decided what’s going down.”
He shakes out a cigarette from his pack of Camel Blue’s and lights up. I pretend not to notice. Two, three puffs in, then, “Shit man, sorry about that. I forgot you quit.” He flings the smoldering light out a nearby window.
“Kirill’t worry about it.” Christ—no Tic Tacs again. I chew the side of my tongue instead, which at least takes my mind a little off the cigarette.
“So you’ve called everybody in?” I ask to switch topics.
“Everyone who could afford to, yeah. We’ve got a couple guys over in Augusta doing a run on some guy’s cheating wife. Miles is in the hospital,” he finishes, quieter. “Listen, I didn’t want to say this on the phone because it just seemed wrong. We’re not sure Miles is gonna pull through.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I’ve said. Those Eastern European guys? Russian guys, yeah? Remember when I told you they got into another fight? Picked our guy off the streets in the middle of broad daylight and drove him out to the quarry and chucked him right in like an old tire. Broke his neck, back, arms, legs, all of it. Laid there two days before a couple kids found him and called the police.”
“Holy shit.”
“That’s not half of it. That’s the instigator.” He jostles his pack back out and lights up again, forgetting what I’d told him a minute ago, just like I knew he would. “We’re talking drive-bys. Death threats. Guns in bars. Tension, Quinn. Motherfucking tension. It’s got me strung like a…like a…”
He takes a drag on his cigarette and leaves the rest of the sentence to me. This is Palmer, though. Strung out and nervous before anything goes down. But if you had a gun in his face, or if the cops caught him stealing some guy’s TV, he could charm snakes with his explanations. Just the kind of guy you need when you’re in a tight spot. We reach the top of the stairs and head towards a room in the corner.
“And listen.” He blows smoke. “Really, honestly listen, Quinn. I’m not bullshitting you on this one. Man, last thing I’d want to do is bullshit you about something like this.”
“I know.”
“But tell me truthfully, what is it with this babysitting gig? You guys man and wife already?”
“Nothing like that.”
“Have you fucked her? Quinn—man—tell me the truth. Are you fucking the mob boss’s daughter?”
“The hell do you care for? What does this have to do with your war? You’re gonna drive up to big man’s house and tell him yourself? Think you’ll get a reward out of it?”
My hands are clenched and shaking. I hadn’t noticed when I was talking, and now I relax them.
“Easy, easy Q. Nothing meant by it. Come on.” He chucks the halfway-smoked cigarette through this window like he did with the last one. “We’ll try and get you back soon as we can.”
This room has more of the hackneyed feel to it. The place is tiny, and the walls are a suffocating brick. There’s one round table in the center, like we were King Arthur’s knights or something, and a few wooden chairs set around it. I recognize my boys immediately. Kirill’s sitting to the left, then Crash—a slippery, red-haired bastard with the polar opposite temperament as Palmer, which is cool, then frantic. Then Nail—two hundred and seventy pounds of muscle and mouth like a bottle cap. I’ve known the guy six years and never heard him say one word.
I know shit’s already gone down just by looking around. The guys look like they haven’t slept in a year, like a steamroller’s just been dropped on their heads. They hardly look up when I walk in. I make eye contact with Crash and Kirill and find my seat.
“We’re practically adjourned here,” Palmer says, doing likewise. He turns to me. “I gave Quinn the rundown already. What we’ve got on our hands is a travesty. We’ve got to decide if we’re gonna make it into a war.”
“A war against who?” I say, sitting down. “Are these guys scattered or are they organized?”
“We don’t know,” Kirill says. He rubs his jaw with one hand. It’s sharp as a throwing star. “But you can do the math. We were attacked not once, but twice by the same group of fellows. Two of ours dead—new guys.” He raises his eyebrows at Palmer.
“Already told him about all that.”
“Then you understand the situation. They’re not interested in sending a message, whoever they are. They’re putting targets on our guys’ backs.”
“My baby brothers can’t sleep at night,” Crash adds. “And they’re in the west, in the center of town. They say they’ve been getting looks from random big guys in the streets. They’re carrying knives. Imagine that—eleven years old, man, and he won’t go inside a Starbucks without his switch.”
“They want us exterminated. That’s the simple truth,” Kirill says. “Maybe they’ve got beef with us because of a hit. Maybe they just want us out of town. Maybe it’s the territory wars all over again. We think it’s the Russians coming over from New York. Competition too hot in the big city so they think this small-town stuff would be better suited for their needs. Can’t go up against the mob bosses because they’re too powerful, but if they take us out, then they’ve got a hole they can fit themselves into all nice and snug.”
“You know it’s the Russians?” I ask.
“We’re pretty goddam sure,” Palmer says.
My mind flips over to Theo’s guards, Andrei and Ikov. Just for a moment—but that wouldn’t make any sense at all. Theo is knowingly financing a member of the Stitches—that’s practically, no literally, sponsorship. There’s no way anyone working for him would be stupid enough to declare open war against a friendly organization—that’s just the way to find yourself at the bottom of the canal. Hell, judging from the guys’ muscles he was probably the guy Theo called to put the guys down the water he didn’t’ like.
“How many?”
“We’ve only got guesses. Ten to twenty we think. The guys’ who have attacked us haven’t come in crews any more than five.”
“So we’re evenly matched.”
I turn around and survey the faces again. Everyone’s gone quiet. I guess that means they’re waiting on me.
“What is it?”
“You tell us,” Kirill says.
“Tell you what? What I know about your Russians? Not a thing.”
“Not that.” Kirill has one hand over his jaw again. “We want to know how much longer this babysitting gig is gonna last. Because when we go to war—and we’re pretty sure that’s what this is coming to—we’ve got to know who we’re with.”
This is a challenge, that’s for damn sure. I don’t say anything, but my fingers are thrumming against my knees.
“Should we count on another three months before we make any moves? Or maybe I should write to Theo Butler myself and ask him if maybe he has any ideas.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Take a guess.”
Kirill’s just sitting there, stroking his chin. I’ve got the overwhelming urge to walk over there and just break it for him to see if he would still be stroking it after I was finished. Somehow I reel myself in.
“Quinn,” Palmer speaks up.
“The hell do you want?”
“It’s okay, man. We’re not the ones you want to fight.”
“You absolutely sure about that? Maybe he’s the one you wanna ask instead?”
Kirill turns his eyes up, and the corners of his mouth follow, like little invisible threads have attached these parts of his face together. It’s not a smile, though. Just something small and weasely. My hands are trembling again.
“Why don’t you go easy, Kirill,” Palmer says. “You’re being a goddamn prick, you know?”
Kirill’s face doesn’t change, and he doesn’t say anything either. If it’d been any other guy who said that to him other than Palmer, he’d probably have rammed his fist into the other guy’s face by now. That was the thing about Palmer, though. He got away with saying what nobody else could say.
“Kirill has a point, though,” Crash says. “I mean—its been months since we’ve seen the Q. What the hell are we supposed to think? I don’t know what you’re doing with the girl for five g’s a day, and I don’t give a damn. It’s just to me, from the sounds of things, Butler’s got you hooked up all nicely with his family and doesn’t want you to leave.”
“You think I can’t be a Stitch and take other jobs?”
“Five g’s a day,” Crash says again. “Five g’s, Q. I don’t know why you’d even want to still be a Stitch with that kind of dough.”
I wait for someone else to speak but the room’s gone numb and quiet. Kirill’s stroking his chin, Palmer is chain-smoking to keep from having to say anything, and Nail is just sitting there like a giant Buddha.
“Right.” I stand up and make for the door.
Palmer rushes over. “C’mon, Q. No harm meant by any of it, right guys? We’re just all on our toes—we’re just trying to get all this settled. Just—just come sit back down. We’ll square this all out, eh Q?”
“Square what out?”
“This—this whole thing, right? I mean—just come sit back down, and we’ll finish talking, alright?”
“Talking about what? You’ve already said it all. It’s between my gig with mob boss or my brothers. Kirill has gone out of his way to make sure that’s nice and clear to everyone.”
“Jesus, man. You make it sound like we’re gonna crucify you or something. We just need to hear from you more, you know? We’re not asking you to make any, like, permanents sacrifices or anything like that, you know?”
“You’ll hear from me plenty.” I push the door open. “There’s no way in hell I’m abandoning the only family I’ve ever had. Not even for five g’s.”
You can just feel the strain leave the room, like helium out of an old party balloon.
“Kirill—” Kirill looks up. “Sorry if that was heated,” I say. “Real glad no one’s got a broken jaw. And by no one, I mean me.”
“No worries, Q.”
Palmer’s cigarette is dangling from the corner of his mouth like a rat’s tail. He has a strange, loopy smile on his face. “You son of a bitch, Q. Looping us around your finger like that—don’t know what you’re thinking or what you’re planning. Damn, it’s gonna be good to have you back.”
“Get used to it. I’m a Stitch again until we put those sons of bitches underground for what they did to Miles.”
The voices trail behind me as I close the door and head back downstairs. I hadn’t been thinking about Maya when I was talking to the guys, but I start to now. I’ve got no idea what I’m going to say to her, but I’m just hoping to find something by the time I reach the first floor.