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I turn around to the front door and walk very slowly. I’m sure the doorman thinks I’m scared shitless. And while he’s thinking he’s got the upper hand, smiling like a self-gratified idiot, I’m studying him in the reflection, moving at a crawl towards where I’m going to teach him a lesson about fucking with me.
He’s got a grill. Loose, extra-long shirt and pants so baggy there’s more fabric piling up on his shoes than anywhere else. He’s holding a beefy semi-auto in his right hand, left hand still on those damn ridiculous pants. Finger on the trigger, gun canted thug-style.
The door opens inward. I look at the clerk. Still at the counter. He peers over my shoulder at the doorman and smiles. My left hand still on the door as I step in past it. The clerk looks to me. I wink.
Blast off.
Swing the door as hard as I can and the doorman either has to get clocked by it, drop his pants to catch it with his left hand or take the gun off of me to catch it with his right. Right hand dominant. He reaches with the gun hand to stop the thing. And I turn around. One hand clamps the gun and hand together. The other hand peels that trigger finger back with a crisp snap. I take one huge step inside. Right hook to his glass jaw and that fucking grill flies out of his mouth and sails across the room, trailing saliva and fresh blood. Snatch the semi-auto from his paw and swing. Right between the eyes. Once, twice, three times. I get up to six and then grab him by his unconscious neck and hurl him at the register.
The clerk dives for something. The doorman crashes into the counter and crumbles down. I get to it, look over the top. See the clerk’s foot-long braids as he’s down on one knee digging for something. Grab a handful of his hair. Pull. Squeals as he launches up and over. He comes with me at a sprint across the room. Feet dragging, arms uselessly flailing, forehead predestined to kiss the stud behind the drywall. Kaboom. Wall, meet face. He drops to his knees and keels over to the side. Hard. The head-sized crevice in the dry wall has a comical wet red dot in the middle.
I walk to the back wall, stand next to the door the third dude disappeared into. I breathe deep and try and calm the rage setting me on fire. They’re just punks running a scam in a part of town where this shit sometimes happens. Don’t kill anybody. Give them some help. Give them some help, as Clevenger and I used to say. Count to seven before the door opens. The third dude steps into the fray, muzzle first. He never sees me. Just my bare knuckles swinging a haymaker at his nose. A satisfying crunch and lights out.
The guy is armed with another semi-auto. I take it. I take the doorman’s piece as well. A quick glance behind the counter and see a sawed off shotgun the clerk was trying to dig out. Two more seconds at best and he would have had it pointed at little ol’ RDB. Mine, now. One can never have too many drop-guns. For as much as I love my .44, I don’t want its bullets getting traced back to me.
The T-shirt is on the counter. It joins me as we go outside. Guns in the seat next to me, shirt on top. I leave. Think about where I’m going to have lunch.
19
1804 hours
The Cake Hole.
The Cake Hole is a donut shop on the platform with enough seating for twenty people or so. It’s reminiscent of an airport food court place. I bet this shop makes a killing around the morning commute. The commuter rail train between Three Mile High and Saint Ansgar arrived at 1802 hours by the official rail platform clock. Buster should be on his way here.
In one hand I have Buster’s T-shirt neatly folded into a wad with a piece of Scotch tape wrapped around it. In the other hand I have a printout of his mug shot from the county jail’s website. I study the picture; look up into the crowd as it disgorges. Human cattle all mooing in unison as they do their zombie walk towards the parking lot.
Cutting through the crowd comes Buster. He’s wearing a long sleeve jean jacket unbuttoned. It’s three sizes too big. Better to hide a firearm that way. His matching pants sag. His belt buckle is an absurdly large oval with a marijuana leaf on it. The buckle is big enough to serve as a sheath for a palm dagger. He’s got the waist of his pants buckled mid-thigh.
He walks with the pimp limp. In his mug shot he has cornrows and an unkempt, patchy beard. Now his head is shaved clean and he has a mustache with some kind of beard hair art. Meticulous.
Buster walks up. No hesitation. Looks me up and down. Sets his jaw off to one side in that thug tough guy look. He just his chin out and nods his head in one quick fashion.
“What’s up,” he says. “You Buckner?”
“Yes. And you must be Buster.”
“They call me Raptor. You can too.”
“They call you Snitch, but if you prefer Raptor I’ll go the extra mile for you.”
“Yeah. Do that. I’ll call you Dick.”
“You’ll call me Dick once.”
Buster smirks but he must tell from the sound of my voice I’m serious. “All right. I get it.” He looks around. “So what’s up? My train leaves in eight minutes.”
“I brought you the gift Abe said you wanted.” I hand him the wad.
He smirks again and opens it up. Reads the T-shirt. In the donut shop, in front of a crowd of dulled mid-level management, cubicle dwellers and people who need things like Friday night poker games with nickel buy-ins to bring excitement to their lives, Buster, a guy who couldn’t look more gangbanger if he tried, looks at a shirt which reads SNITCHES WIND UP IN DITCHES. Standing in front of me, a guy who couldn’t look more rogue cop if he tried.
“I hope you like it,” I say. “I went through a lot of trouble to get that shirt.”
“I bet you did. Anyways, I meant cash.”
“This is better than cash,” I say. “I got it from a store in a strip mall off of MLK Boulevard and Seventeenth.”
“Phat Urban?”
