Hell for leather atlanta.., p.6
Hell for Leather (Atlanta Burning Book 2), page 6
“This is a stolen car and they know it and they pull you over, and then they let you go?” said Johnny.
“Sho’nuff.”
“What the hell is happening to Atlanta. You better hope your name isn’t on the bounty list, Q. We’d play cat and mouse all month.”
“Who’s Q? I’m…” Q took his license from the dash and read it. “I’m Alex White.”
“Alex White.”
“Most WASP-y name I could come up with,” said Q. “Now I got White privilege. Can just take police cars. ‘Sides, you play cat and mouse with me, you don’t know which one you are, partner.”
Beyond the parking lot, traffic flowed. Heads turned to watch them, people gawking at the cop writing a ticket, something not seen often.
“You quit poker? Haven’t seen you at the MGM,” said Johnny.
“I’m there some, at the high stakes table. But mostly I play a private game now. High-rolling gangsters play for millions, kid.”
Johnny shifted to see Q better.
“You play for millions?”
“Crazy-ass Columbian down Miami owes me half a mil. Imma let him off easy in exchange for a favor. Don’t know what that favor is yet, but he controls a lot of flow. Reminds me.” Q turned to reach into the back row. He grabbed something and dropped it in Johnny’s lap.
Johnny held up the baggie of white powder.
“Q. This better not be coke.”
“It’s uncut, kid. Pure as snow. I’m buying you off.”
“I don’t snort cocaine, you dummy,” said Johnny.
“That’s half a pound. Worth fifteen grand. Could have a hell of a September.”
Johnny inspected the baggie in the light, like some narcotic connoisseur. “Where’d you get half a pound?”
“I got rooms full. Somebody had to grab old Monty’s spot. Might as well be ya boy. Maybe you take that, spend September high as a damn kite, and don’t chase bounties.”
“You’re worried I’ll grab your goons.”
“Sho’nuff.”
“Did you grab old Monty’s spot? You’re boss of the Babcocks?”
“You know what crime is? Crime is the biggest baddest man doing what he wants, long as he can. Right now you’re looking at the man,” said Q.
Johnny twisted to glance in the back seat. Baggies full of powder littered the floorboard, like a bakery. “You got a fortune in here.”
“What’d I tell you.”
“Those cops who pulled you over, what if they looked?” said Johnny.
“Be some dead cops.”
“So you’re a crime lord who rides around in a cop car, writing speeding tickets. I swear.” The passenger door was open and Johnny tossed the baggie out.
“Hey,” said Q. “That was a gift.”
“I don’t want it.”
“I don’t touch the shit either,” said Q. “Still, though, it’s worth fifteen G’s. Fifteen is fifteen.”
“Are you on the bounty list?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care, but I tole you once. They’s only so many gunslingers in Atlanta. Best for everybody, we don’t get mad at the other,” said Q.
“Augustus told me the same thing.”
Q removed his glasses. The skin around his eyes was puffy and scarred, like a childhood wound he never had treated. He polished his glasses on his shirt. “When’d you see Auggie?”
“Last night. At the MGM. Said he wanted us to be friends,” said Johnny.
“Auggie’s going off the deep end. Man’s addicted to Molly, getting wild.”
“Molly the drug? Ecstasy?”
“That and bath salts. Still. Still the man don’t miss often,” said Q. “
“He was grinning a lot.”
“You smart you stay away from him. He’s a shooter.”
“He said he’s keeping track of me and Bella.”
Q slid the glasses back on. “Don’t blame him there.”
“You’re gonna die, Q, like Monty did, if you keep pretending to be a crime lord. People kill crime lords.”
“Pretending? Who’s pretending? Here I am, tryna be nice.”
“You pulled me over to be nice? Give me cocaine?” said Johnny.
Q held up a finger. “You hear that?”
“What?”
Q’s door was still open. He looked up into the blue, then slid out. “Something like…” He shielded the sun with his hand, looking upward. Q wasn’t as tall as Johnny, or as broad, but he carried an arrogance that made him bigger.
“What’re you doing?”
“Looking. Looking for the thing I hear.”
“For what?” said Johnny.
“Maybe if your ass shut up one time.” Q pointed. “That’s it.”
Johnny got out and squinted against the hot glare. “At what?”
“That. The thing floating.”
Johnny searched the blue and the brilliance until it hurt. “I don’t see anything.”
“It’s a drone.”
Johnny quieted and waited for a lull in traffic. When it came, he detected at the fringes of his hearing a light whirring. Easily missed. He followed the sound and spotted a machine hovering three hundred feet in the air, mostly visible because of the blinking red light.
“The hell.”
“Sitting there looking at us. You being followed?
“My money’s on you, if it’s one of us,” said Johnny.
“Ain’t that some bull. Who’s gone follow a couple’a honest gents talking cocaine.” Q waved at it.
“I’m leaving and I bet it follows you.”
“Bet you a million it don’t.” Q raised his boot from the gravel and said, “Ah, damn, we stepped on your blow. That’s why you don’t throw it on the ground, kid.”
8
AnnaLynne Isaacson
That evening Johnny pulled into a parking lot and searched the skies. He’d yet to see the drone again, and he wished he had a phone to text Q, asking for his million.
Celebrated plaintiff’s attorney AnnaLynne Isaacson waited for Johnny outside Bones, her favorite restaurant. Anybody who was anyone needed to be seen there twice a month. He’d joined her once before, and she drank too much and grew handsy with both him and Judge Will Carter.
Meeting her under the covered entryway, he said, “You look like a catalog ad for lawyers.”
She wore heels and a short blue skirt. The top two buttons of her blouse were undone. She kissed him. “I’d rather look like a woman, not a model, Johnny.”
“Can’t be both?”
“Clients don’t want a model. They want a woman who doesn’t know she’s hot. Someone they have a shot of banging,” she said.
“Repeat customers, that way, I guess.”
“You’ve got the best shot of anyone, big boy. But first. Let’s put that pistol back in your car.”
Johnny tilted his head back. “Why’s that.”
“Optics. I’m suing two police officers. I can’t walk around with that thing sticking out.” She flicked the holster.
“It’s a deterrent. Since April—”
“Please, Johnny. For my career.” She took his hand and walked him back to his Mustang. “One of the little sacrifices couples make. Like you not having a phone and me not screaming about it.”
Johnny caught their reflection in a window, returning to the Mustang. Now he looked part and parcel of AnnaLynne’s catalog photo.
Bella didn’t look like an attorney. She looked like a Nike commercial.
He preferred Nikes but they didn’t prefer him back.
Inside Bones, she stopped every few tables to whisper something that caused a riot of laughter. Eyeballs scrutinized him, recognized him, appraised him. He felt like a horse on parade.
They sat at an intimate table for two, candle-lit. The restaurant glowed red and gold, like a sunset. AnnaLynne talked wine with Bones’ sommelier and Johnny shifted awkwardly in his seat. Nobody else wore blue jeans.
He didn’t think it fair he had to break up with a woman he never asked out, but that was the pickle he found himself in. Apart from each other, AnnaLynne Isaacson grew more manageable in his mind, like a problem that might be solved. But together again, he was reminded that fire and kindling didn’t last long. He was round and she was square, a bad fit. He was only with her because…
Why was he with her?
Because he was bored? Because he’d let himself be corralled? Neither spoke well of a man, and he was hell-bent on being a good one.
A bottle of wine came, red, something he couldn’t pronounce. She ordered crab stuffed trout, and he the ribeye.
She left the table before salads arrived, to speak with an older man at the bar. She rubbed his back, her other hand squeezing his arm, both of them laughing, standing closer, closer, and upon returning she confided, “That’s Judge Mann. We call him Judge Hangman, because he’s pitiless. He’s a Yes Man for Mayor Campbell, and I despise him. I don’t know where he thinks he can put all the convicts during September. He’d shoot them if he could.”
“Doesn’t look like you despise him.”
She sipped her wine, gazing at him over the rim. “Remember what I told you?”
“You tell me a lot.”
“I said I look like a woman you could score with. Judge Mann thinks he has a chance because I keep him lubricated.”
Johnny noted another of her blouse’s buttons was undone now. Girl had skills.
“I’ll bring down Campbell, Johnny. You watch. I’ll bring him down and make a fortune doing it,” she said. “God how I hate him and everyone of his bent.”
He debated telling AnnaLynne about his meeting with Campbell. The new misdemeanor law would produce unending clients for her.
She said, “You’re uncomfortable here.”
“Look around, so is everyone. This place isn’t about comfort.”
“Yes but you more than most. You have muscle and grit, like a bull, Johnny. And Bones is a china shop. You’re tall and handsome, and these fops are soft and rich, and they hate that you’re here, making them aware of their flabby arms.”
“Let’s get out of here and get a milkshake, then.”
She took another drink. Set it down thoughtfully. “You’re thinking you should break up with me.”
Johnny tilted his head back. He liked her candor. “That’s true, I am.”
“Even though you enjoy my company and the way I look, you know this doesn’t work.”
And because this morning I told another woman I loved her.
“That’s true too,” he said.
“It makes you uncomfortable, how much more money I earn.”
“You got that one wrong.”
She didn’t look like a woman rejected. More like she held the winning hand in a negotiation. She poured him a glass of wine.
“Enjoy. On me, Johnny.”
“I don’t know and I don’t care how much money you make,” he said.
“I told you how much.”
“I forgot. You say a lot of things.” He tried the wine.
He hoped it’d get better with the steak.
“You don’t believe I can domesticate you,” she said.
He frowned. “Why the hell would you wanna try?”
“It’d be a fun challenge. It’d play out like catnip on the news.”
“A fun challenge, cutting off a man’s balls?”
“Only after I’m done with them.” She swirled her glass—a witch over her cauldron, Johnny thought.
He shifted in his chair, wondering why it was so uncomfortable. They had an audience of eavesdroppers, more covert than last night’s poker players.
“AnnaLynne. Me and you—”
“Johnny. I’m sorry. I thought we were teasing. You’re a wild animal, I meant. I crave a wild animal. But one I could make a doting husband out of. That’s all.”
“You want a doting husband?”
“For a few years. With a prenup,” she said.
“You don’t want a man, you want a dog.”
“Both need obedience school.”
“How’d you feel if I said I wanted to teach you respect? Break your spirit, like a horse? Put a halter over your head, bit in your mouth, walk you on a lead?” he said.
“Good God, Johnny. You sent a shock through my whole body. Is this turning you on? Because I’m getting warmed up.”
“You litigators are freaks.”
“We are, Johnny. Isn’t that the truth. But listen.” She leaned toward him. “I’ll let you break up with me.”
He nodded and said something stupid to his own ears. “I appreciate that.”
“But not yet. Give me a couple more weeks. A month at most,” she said.
“That’s an odd request. Damn odd.”
“Optics, Johnny. They’re everything. I’ll be your victim, but not yet. Besides, by then I might’ve changed your mind.”
“I doubt it.”
She raised her glass to him. “In the meantime. We’ll enjoy each other. Fully.” She smiled and there was that witch again. “Tell me more about breaking my spirit, and the bit in my mouth.”
Bands of carousers crisscrossed Atlanta at night. Some waved In Atlanta We Trust flags, others carried the American flag, others wore pig masks. Some wore red, some blue, and some went naked. Nudity in public, no emergency. When the roving political gangs met, they clashed, even though they had much in common. All of them were young and angry—angry about their city, angry about themselves though unable to voice it, and angry at the unseen world which seemed to contain an evil only felt when you weren’t trying. With nothing else to do, the gangs destroyed beautiful things and called it progress.
The nearest mob threw bricks at Bones’ large front windows. The wealthy patrons inside heard the thunks; the windows had long been replaced with unbreakable glass. The manager, sick of these demoniacs, ran out with a Browning and fired a warning over their heads and the carousers scattered, only brave in the face of safety.
The patrons returned to their blood red wine.
Johnny wished he’d brought his Colt.
After dinner he and AnnaLynne strolled the sidewalk towards their cars, the rabble-rousers gone. AnnaLynne had finished the bottle and she was clutching his arm like a woman jealous, laughing about another woman intercepting them on the way out. The other woman was a competitor and what she’d said sounded banal to Johnny but AnnaLynne took it as weakness and her spirits soared.
Johnny dreaded the cars. She would invite Johnny to her place, or maybe into the backseat, and Johnny knew there’d be hell to pay for accepting, but another of her buttons had popped loose, damn near to her navel, and sometimes race cars needed to be driven, even if you’d sworn off them.
God almighty, what a metaphor to consider. He had to get away from this woman.
The parking lot was weak light and shadow, their footsteps echoing. She rested her head on his shoulder. She smelled like good perfume. Also she smelled like a horse.
Something must’ve knocked loose between his ears, a horse. She hadn’t smelled like a horse inside Bones. Perhaps it was the pumping blood, the pheromones, his fondness for…
Johnny caught the danger ahead.
It was the echoes that alerted him, a foreshock. They ricocheted off the walls wrong, soaking into something he didn’t see. He and AnnaLynne weren’t alone. Maybe he saw something in his periphery, maybe he didn’t, but no matter. He knew someone waited, the hairs on his neck raising, and he cooly dropped his hand to his holster.
He wore no holster.
Johnny slowed, forcing AnnaLynne to decelerate.
Out from behind her SUV stepped a man. The man Johnny’d known was there. A big man, long hair, a fat hillbilly, sweat running down his neck. He held a shotgun by his leg, no talking. Not a rabble-rouser, a hitman.
“Now wait,” said Johnny.
The man swung the shotgun upward; Johnny couldn’t see the manufacturer but it was a double barrel. The man caught the barrels’ forearm and he aimed from the waist.
Shotguns look like cannons, aimed at you.
This new Atlanta, I swear.
Both arms around a stupefied AnnaLynne, Johnny spun them sideways behind a car for cover, falling hard to the asphalt, and the man fired his shotgun.
The bright blast missed everything, shot pinging harmlessly in the distance.
AnnaLynne screamed in Johnny’s ear.
Johnny held a dim awareness that the man was not an elite hitman. They had hope.
He rose to a knee, no time for fear, still behind the car, someone else’s car, a Lexus sedan. He’d go over the trunk at him. Now. He gathered a handful of gravel and rose in a rush.
The man was backing up.
Johnny hurled the gravel and he could throw hard and Youngs don’t miss. The man took a stinging face full of rock.
AnnaLynne shouting again. Johnny up and over the Lexus.
Then there came from an unknown quarter another gunshot, this one distant, less thunderous. The hairy man before Johnny took the hit and his heart erupted. Shot in the back, the bullet punching through in a gore of pulp, like a whale’s blowhole.
The hairy man died on his feet.
Events not making sense in Johnny’s mind. No method to the madness yet.
The man’s fingers went limp and he dropped the shotgun, which never hit the ground because Johnny grabbed it up first.
Move move move.
He jolted back behind the Lexus as their attacker fell dead.
What on earth.
A second shooter. Johnny’s mind was still sloshy with red wine.
The second shooter was behind the man. Where? Likely it was an ally, not an enemy, else the second shooter didn’t know how to aim. Likely but not definite, stay covered.
Singeing his fingers, Johnny broke the double barrel open and checked to see if both shells had been fired. They hadn’t; he had another round.
“Johnathan!” A call out of place in the maelstrom. “You can come out. It was a solitary ambuscade, and it is foreclosed.”
Johnny heard hoof-clatter over the gunfire’s lingering reverb.
Ambuscade?
Despite the tremble in his fingers, he grinned. No other man talked like that.
