Smack!
I gave him an open-palmed slap across the face. I didn’t want to risk knocking him out. Not yet. His head rocked to the side anyway, and when he looked back, that calm-ish veneer was gone. It didn’t take the genius I had labelled him as to realize where this might be going.
“There you go again. Just nod if you want to agree with me. Nod, motherfucker.”
He did.
“So one of my little business partners owns a liquor store in China Town. My accountants tell me he pays early every month. Every month, isn’t that fantastic? He pays for protection to keep his business going. You see how this works? Businesses interacting… synergy?”
I reached out and grabbed a fistful of Tony’s hair with one hand and his jawline with the other, shaking his head back and forth to make him nod furiously. His face was a mask of terror when I let go, pale-skinned with a sheen of sweat.
“When somebody who works for me fucks over a business partner like that, it throws a wrench in the works of my whole business. It fucks with my cash flow. It’s like stealing from me. In certain cultures, when somebody steals something from their employer, it’s customary to cut their hand off. Did you know that?”
Tony opened his mouth, but then shut it again and shook his head, all remaining color draining from his face. He was probably saying he didn’t know and begging me not to do that in equal measures. I wouldn’t have been surprised if a wet patch showed up on the front of his pants.
I was almost ready to boil over. The thought of tenderizing his face under my fists was all too seductive. I simply wanted to let him marinade in his own stupidity a little longer.
“Anyway, my idea was to do that, but also make any shit for brains punk who steals from me eat his own hand too. How the fuck about that?”
With a hard kick, I broke the two flimsy wooden legs on one side of the chair and Tony tumbled to the ground at my feet. As he tried to get up, I kicked him right in the stomach and he crumpled back to the ground with a groaning whoosh of air.
“You stupid motherfucker!” I stomped on his ribs and broke at least one of them.
“Please!” he wheezed.
“Too late for that!”
I bent down and rolled him over, straddling his stomach so I could ruin his face with punches and elbows. After a few strikes, the impacts started sounding pretty wet.
“Please!” This was a lot more gurgly-sounding. More slurred.
“Who else did the job with you?” I asked.
“Jimmy, Brad… Pete!” he spluttered.
“They work for me?” I shook him by the collar of his shirt.
“N-no, sir! Please!”
The one eye that wasn’t swelling shut widened in terror as he saw me pick up one of the broken chair legs, which had splintered to a sharp point, and hold it above my head like I was going to drive a stake into a vampire.
“Please! Let me make it right!” he screamed.
I held him still with my free hand, the broken chair leg shaking with tension above us both. It was time to decide whether he lived or died.
“Are you ever going to fucking break the rules or try to lie to me again?” I asked, as if anybody would say yes under the circumstances.
“No!”
“Right. Jimmy, Brad and…”
“Pete,” Lorenzo finished for me.
“… all do work for me now, understand?”
Tony nodded.
“You’re all going to go back to the liquor store and be on call twenty-four fucking seven for Mr. Xiaou, helping him clean up the mess you made. You’re going to take back all the money you stole, money for the alcohol you stole, money to refund him for his monthly payment to me. Understand?”
Tony grasped the straw with both hands. “Yes! Yes, sir, Mr. Barlow!”
“Anything Mr. Xiaou wants done, you do. If he wants to use your asshole as an ashtray, you’re upside-down next to his armchair while he smokes his pipe, you fucking get me? I’m going to have him fill out a motherfucking customer satisfaction survey, and if I hear you referred to him as anything but ‘sir’ then I swear the search parties will never find your body.”
I stood up and threw the chair leg away, looking with satisfaction at the blood on my knuckles. Tony took one look at me and knew I meant it, and I’d have fun doing it.
“Get your ass out of here. You get the money and you start work in China Town by three o’clock this afternoon. Go!”
Mr. Businessman didn’t need to be asked again, he didn’t even pause to pick up a stray tooth. He got the hell out of dodge.
Lorenzo closed the door behind him and then pulled out the giant trash bags and a roll of duct tape from the inside pockets of his jacket to put them back in his briefcase.