Chance
I wash her go, teasin’ me, surprised by just how much this girl can drive me wild even after I’ve fucked her. Usually once I’ve fucked a woman, I don’t give two damns about ’em. Maybe that’s a fucked-up thing, but I’ve never claimed not to be a fucked-up man. Usually, once I’ve fucked a woman, I don’t see the point of dippin’ in for a second time. Anyway, most of the time they’re just dive-bar chicks or whores picked up during one of my jobs, and I’ve got more important shit to do than hang around. But right now, Becky is the important shit, and I’ve gotta hang around until I hear from the Family.
I’m thinkin’ on this when my cell buzzes from the TV stand. I pick up it and see that it’s Tony Donati. He’s the Capo Bascone for the Family. So the Family know I’m here. They’ll give me new orders now.
“Tony,” I say, answerin’.
“Chance,” Tony says.
I can just see him sittin’ in his office. Tony is about the most typical Family man I’ve ever met, all gold chains and hairy chest and white vest and fatter’n any man has a right to be and still be able to move. An office right next to Giovanni’s. I stay silent, waitin’ for him to speak. After a round of coughing and a puff on a cigarette—he puffs loud—he says, “I’m gonna need you to lay low for a while at the motel. Ask the manager to move you around the rooms, so that if the police get ideas about buggin’, it’ll be harder for ’em.”
“Bugging?” I snap. “What the fuck? What’s happened?”
“Relax your tone, boy,” Tony says, in his fat, throaty, old-man’s voice. “The police’ve found one of their own at the warehouse. What the hell, Chance? Why’re the police finding an undercover at the warehouse?”
“I don’t fuckin’ know!” I’m gettin’ angry now. It all feels too convenient. I’m sent after Julian, but instead I find four goons in possession of the girl promised to Julian, a slaughter, and a dead cop. None of it makes any goddamn sense. But I can’t let my anger show to Tony. In the Family, if you start showin’ signs that you might be unsure, they’ll make quick work of you.
“I won’t tell you again,” Tony says. “Remember who you’re speakin’ to.”
I sigh, repress a growl, and then say, “Alright.”
I can almost hear his shit-eating I’m-in-control grin. “The police are tearing the warehouse apart. The word on the pig-line is that they’re branding it a shootout gone bad, so whatever you did down there is workin’ for now, but the last thing we need is you out and about where the police can see you. So just stay where you are, keep yourself quiet.”
If there’s one thing I hate, it’s sittin’ around waiting for other men to decide on what’s goin’ to happen to me. But again, I can’t talk shit to the Capo Bascone. A thought which has been formin’ ever since I stepped into the warehouse comes to the front of my mind now. I think about when I was a kid, how everybody in every Family I worked in seemed scared of me, maybe ’cause I was deadlier’n half of the men at half their age or maybe ’cause I didn’t hang around with them, smokin’ and talkin’ shit all day. I start wonderin’ if maybe one of these scared bastards has decided that they don’t want me around ’cause I’m too strange, an outsider, an orphan with no real ties to the Family. Just a killer, a lone killer, someone maybe they see as a threat. But who’s they? My bet’d be Julian, since he’s the reason I was there. I realize that Tony hasn’t asked about the girl, which’d be down to Julian, too. He’s the one who was promised her.
I decide to ask about it, as subtly as I can.
“Alright, I’ll do that…” I trail off, like this is the end of the conversation. Then I add, like it’s just occurred to me, “Oh, yeah, Tony. The fuck’s happening with Julian, then? I went in there to find him, and I find all that instead. The fuck does that happen? Somebody fucked up, I’m guessin’.” I’m guessin’ that Julian purposefully led me into a situation which could only end in me gettin’ killed—by the bastards who had Becky, the bastards I didn’t know were there—or arrested, on account of the undercover. “We got any idea who?”
“Don’t ask about that,” Tony says at once, voice weirdly hostile. “If you know what’s good for you, Chance, you’ll do like I say and lie low. That’s all you can do. Change rooms, lie low, don’t do anything that’ll draw attention to yourself.”
“You know lying low drives me fuckin’ crazy,” I mutter. “You know lying low drives every hitter crazy.”
“Well, get a bit crazy then, but don’t ask me another fuckin’ goddamn question.”
Tony slams the phone down. I drop the phone to the floor and begin pacing up and down the room, tryin’ to get some of this anger outta me. Tony’s a bastard, but he usually treats me with the respect I deserve. I’ve killed for this Family for years, and usually they speak to me like a man who ought’a be feared, respected. Not fuckin’ bossed around. The fuckin’ asshole.
As I pace, I listen to the blasting shower in the rest room, and my mind starts wanderin’ to the flesh the shower is blastin’ over, how tight and sexy it is, and how it’s the sort of flesh that might make a man forget about his anger for a little while. I walk into the bathroom. Becky’s got the shower door closed, but her body is outlined against the glass, bending over as she rubs the shampoo from her hair.
I clear my throat, and she says, her voice all high-pitched and surprised. “Yeah?”