The Star Fleet looked like a fleabag to Alex as he parked his Maybach behind the building and studied, on his car’s computer monitor, the blueprints and video his people had sent to him. There were no windows in the back of the rundown establishment, nor any security cameras, which was why he had parked back there, but the place, inside, was loaded with eyeballs.

He searched for that sweet spot.  Every business had one.  In this case, he wanted to figure out where the owners were hanging out to keep an eye on their customers.  There wouldn’t be cameras there.  They wouldn’t want their shadiness recorded.

His man onsite had already confirmed that the two owners had arrived at the establishment, but they went behind a curtain that led down a back hall.  Alex’s man had no idea where exactly they were down that hall.  Wherever they were, Alex knew, would be the sweet spot.

And he continued to searched for and eventually found that spot on the blueprints.  In the back where he was parked, in the far-left corner.  The only private office in the building.  It had to have a dummy wall.  And it did.  It had an entrance from the side of the building: an entrance that looked like a wall.

He studied the real-time video first.  From what he was being shown, there were two bodyguards inside the joint where the mostly middle-aged crowd were gambling that early in the morning, and one guard was out front.  When Alex saw the layout, he phoned Jimmy Hines.

“I’m going in,” he said.  “Make sure our men keep those bodyguards up front.”

“I’ll give the order, sir, for more men to go inside,” Jimmy said, and Alex ended the call.

Already armed, he got out of his car and made his way along the side of the building, where he knew the door masquerading as a wall was located.  Since such walls were standard issue in safe houses he’d operated in his time, he knew exactly how to operate that one.  He made sure nobody was around and then carefully felt his way around until he hit the spot, and it popped open like the door it actually was.

He entered what was the storage room of the building and peeped out of the room’s door.  When he saw that the hall was clear, he made his way next door: to that office.  He heard voices; two distinct voices that remained in line with what he expected.  He wanted no surprises.  He wanted to get in and get out.  That was why he didn’t delay.  As soon as he made it up to that door, he leaned back, and then kicked it open.

Cal Fleck and Josh Brown were the two men he heard in that office, and as soon as the door flew open, they both flew to their feet.

Josh Brown immediately grabbed his chair and threw it at Alex, which Alex knocked away, while Cal Fleck attempted to reach inside his desk drawer and retrieve his gun.  That was when Alex pulled out two guns.  He pointed one at Cal Fleck, and the other one at Josh Brown.

“Compared to me,” he said to them, “you two are play-play gangsters.  Don’t fuck with the real thing.  Everything you hold dear, including yourselves, will die if you do.”

Cal removed his hand from his desk drawer.

“Come around where I can see your ass,” Alex said to him.  “Close the door,” he said to Josh.

With guns still on both of them, they did as they were told: Cal walked around the desk, and Josh closed the almost broken door.

Alex leaned against the edge of the desk with both men right in front of him.  “Talk,” he said.

But neither one of them said a word.

“I said talk,” Alex said again.

“I’m no snitch,” Josh said.

“Me neither,” said Cal.

Alex smiled.  “You’re no snitch?  Is that what you think you would be if you talked to me?”  Alex stood up quickly and walked up to both men.  “No, gentlemen, you wouldn’t be snitches if you talked to me.  You’ll be providing me with information.  But if you don’t talk to me, you’ll be dead.”

And then, without any warning, Alex tripped Cal down onto his back, and then tripped Josh down onto his back, and then quickly knelt down between them and forced the barrel of each gun into each man’s mouth.

Their eyes became so enlarged that they looked as if they had pop-eyes, as both men never dreamed this billionaire businessman could be this thug.  But there it was.  He was even worse than they were!

“I will blow your motherfucking heads off,” Alex said to them, “if you don’t tell me what I need to know.  Now do I pull the trigger, or do you assholes stop wasting my time?”

“We’ll talk,” Cal said in a muffled voice given what was in his mouth.  “Please.”

Alex gave them an additional second to squirm in fear, and then removed the guns from their mouths.

He stood up, and then leaned against the front of the desk again.  Both men, true believers now, stood back on their feet too.

“Now tell me what I need to know,” Alex said.

“We didn’t want to do it,” Josh volunteered, “but we didn’t have a choice.  Tell him, Cal.  We didn’t have a choice!”

“We were just minding our business,” Cal said.  “Yeah, we were making noise about that casino, and we started a campaign to make sure that referendum didn’t pass.  But when it passed, and you were given the greenlight by the state to begin construction, we let it go.  That shit was bigger than us, what were clowns like us going to do?  But then she got in touch with us.  We didn’t get in touch with her.  She got in touch with us!  And that’s when it seemed possible.  That’s when it seemed like we might just be able to pull it off and stop construction.”

“Who got in touch with you?” Alex asked.

“That lady,” said Josh.  “She had shit on us that would put us away for life.  We had to do what she told us to do!  We had no choice.”

Alex frowned.  His patience with those two bozos was wearing thin.  “What lady?” he asked.

“Courtney Tyson,” Cal said.  “The one that drove her car through Lucinda’s yesterday.”

Alex was floored.  “She got in touch with you?”

Cal nodded.  “She told us, if we didn’t fill out fake ballots and get the mayor to overturn the referendum results, she would go to the Feds on us.  She knew all about every crime we ever committed.  She had book on us!”

“It was blackmail is what it was,” said Josh.

“How did you know her?” Alex asked.

“We didn’t!” said Josh.  “She came to us like Cal said.  We’d never seen her or heard of her before in our lives.”

“What about the muscle behind her?  Did you know who was putting her up to it?”

“She was putting her own self up to it!” said Cal.  “We didn’t know about anybody else.”

Alex exhaled.  What the fuck was going on?  Courtney wouldn’t have the kind of reach to get crime books on two backwater thugs like Fleck and Brown.  She wasn’t involved in that life.  At least not as far as he knew.

But then again, he also knew, she wasn’t in Chapter 11 bankruptcy when he knew her either.  She wasn’t desperate for money when he knew her either.

But something else didn’t make sense to Alex.  “She died yesterday,” he said to Fleck and Brown. “Lonnie Wilder started pulling permits this morning.  Why wouldn’t you stop him if the person who had book on you was dead?”

Cal and Josh looked at each other.  Josh spoke up this time. “Because we figured, since that casino is going to run us out of business anyway, and since it was already in the works, why stop it?  It just might work.”

“But in hindsight,” said Cal, “we were just being dumb and dumber.  We made a mistake.”

A mistake?  If the mayor would have started that ball rolling, their little mistake could have cost Alex millions of dollars and could have caused him to lose months of time to get all the permissions he needed reinstated.   If that woman they were assisting had been a half-second faster on that gas pedal, Kari might have been taken away from him.  And they consider all that shit a mistake?

Alex stood up, put his guns away, and then knocked each one of them out cold.  With one punch each.

Maybe they were going to call that a mistake too.  But Alex didn’t.  He meant to do it.  He meant to incapacitate those assholes.

But it wasn’t a dying offense.  They were only being the shady business people they were.  The muscle behind Courtney Tyson, and Alex was convinced there was plenty muscle, were the bad guys he wanted.

He left the way he came.

 

“Open up,” the driver yelled as he stopped at the security gate.  “Open the fuck up!”

The security gate opened, and the Peugeot 308 sped through the gates and traveled all the way up to the entrance doors.  The driver didn’t hesitate.  He immediately jumped out of the car, and then ran inside the stately mansion.

The main person he wanted to see, Manny, the security chief, was walking up the hall toward the foyer when he hurried in.  He hurried up to Manny.

“What’s the matter with you?” Manny asked.

“She’s dead,” the driver said breathlessly.  He said as if he couldn’t hardly wait to tell it.  “She’s dead.”

Manny stared at the driver.  “Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yes, yes!  We just got the word when she didn’t check in.  She is dead.  Courtney Tyson is dead!”

“And Kari Grant?” Manny asked anxiously.

“Alive,” said the driver.

Manny exhaled.  “Oh, boy,” he said.  “Oh fucking boy!”

“You’re going to tell him, or will I need to?” the driver asked.

The driver’s insinuation that Manny couldn’t do his job brought him back to himself.  And he frowned.  “What do you think?” he asked.  “Just get back to your post.  I’ll do the telling.”

“But what now?” asked the driver.

“What are you worrying about that for?  Get back to your post. You’ll know what you need to know when you need to know it!”

The driver wasn’t completely satisfied with that answer, but he knew he had no other options.  He left.

And Manny, terrified by how this could turn, and how it had to escalate, turned back around and headed back down the hall.