There’s an angry shout of agreement from everyone in the bar, beers and pool sticks raised high.
“Eva, Genn, you’re with me. We’re gonna go have a talk with them ‘quietly.’ The rest of you, go make some noise close to Mickey’s. It’s far enough away that if the feds catch a whiff of you, they won’t be paying attention to where the real business is. Just don’t answer any questions if you get pulled over, and remember which of the boys in blue are on our take, got it?”
“You got it, Prez,” shouts one of the members. A few moments later, half the club is gearing up to get moving, and I take a deep breath.
This is what I live for.
We’re riding again, this time for what feels like a more white-collar meeting than our trip to the liquor store. Well, not for us—we normally don’t go storming into realty offices like this.
Our bikes pull up at an office building with a nice exterior garden plan. It’s got a fountain outside and everything.
“James & Son Realtors,” Eva says as she pulls up beside me in the parking lot, Genn pulling up a couple of seconds later. “Nice place. Wonder if they’re busy this time of day?”
“Nah,” I say back, “most of them will be out to lunch right about now.”
“Good,” Genn says, cracking his knuckles, “I’d like a little one-on-one time with someone right about now.”
“Only a couple of cars in the parking lot,” I point out. “Whoever brought lunch from home today is going to get a rude interruption, hate to say. Let’s go.”
We push the door open and let ourselves inside, making a quick and direct path to the nearest open office door we can spot.
“E-excuse me?” the secretary at the front desk tries to say as we stride past.
“We’re expected,” Genn says with a friendly smile as we walk by, and the secretary just gapes for a moment before giving up. The balding, white-collar scrub inside the office we make our way to looks up from the sandwich he’s eating, and his face goes pale at the sight of us.
“C-can I help you three?”
“Yes, we’d like to arrange a meeting, immediately, if you’ve got an opening,” I say, standing in the middle of the room with my arms crossed as Eva and Genn flank me.
“Y-yeah, I guess I can squeeze you in,” he stammers, sweating at the forehead before taking a deep breath and getting his bearings. “You’re from the union Club, aren’t you?”
My face splits into a grin. It feels good to get a little recognition every now and then. “And you must be one of the lackeys opening the doors for NexaCo to stroll up in here, huh?”
“Now sir,” the man says, holding a hand out as if trying to explain, but there is a definite edge of condescension to his voice, as though he’s explaining down to someone. “NexaCo has a complicated reputation, but besides the fact that we’re just agents carrying out a sale that’s been trying to go through for years, the jobs that NexaCo could bring into this city are—”
“Underpaid, without benefits, and designed to drive the local competition to the poor house,” I finish for him. “Unlike yours, I’d be willing to bet, but you don’t have to think about that on a day to day basis, do you?” I add with a wink.
His face is still, but he looks nervous.
I continue, “Now I know the town’s newest guests from Washington make you think we’d change our tune, but just to be clear that isn’t the case, I thought we’d drop by to—”
I’m cut off as the man leaps from his office chair, making a mad dash for the door to bolt out the office. Genn catches him at the waist as he tries to slip by, and as he loses his footing, he smacks his head against the side of the doorframe and starts kicking his legs, knocking over some of the office equipment on the desk, I catch a snippet of the voices up front.
“I’m sorry, the only person in the office i-is tied up w-with something right—”
“Okay, yeah, I know them, now just let me get past so I can—”
I know that voice. “Cherry!” I shout out from the office, and it goes quiet up front a moment, the only noise being Genn’s grunting with the agent in his grasp. “Hey, you two got a handle on this guy?”
Genn gives a stoic nod, and I return it before slipping around them and making my way out the door and down the hallway to see a flustered-looking Cherry standing beside the distraught secretary.
“Leon, what the hell’s going on here?” Cherry has to keep her volume in check, despite the shouting from the office behind us.