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“Big mistake,” Casso says as she shoves Joey to the floor and kicks him once in the gut. The big guy groans as he doubles over.
The dancer keeps gyrating. The young guys stare and one claps half-heartedly, but the dancer calls him a dipshit and his friends make him stop.
Casso goes down the hall. I hurry to follow. He opens each door: bathroom, bathroom, office, supply closet, and the last one’s locked. It doesn’t take long for him to break the thing open—the whole building’s half rotted, and the door’s frame is no exception. Inside, lights on, there’s table after folding table filled with rifles, handguns, shotguns, what look like grenades, tons of ammunition, something like a huge machine gun, all of it tagged with prices with magazines spread out in fans, a veritable supermarket for illegal guns and killing machines.
I stand there and stare in shock.
“This explains why these guys keep the place,” Casso says absently, toying with a submachine gun that looks like it was made in the future. “The strippers are a front for the fun stuff.”
“They’re arms dealers.” I choke out the words.
“Probably with Eastern European connections, based on some of these weapons. Most of them are Russian or former-Soviet manufacture. Nasty shit.”
“Why’d he come after you? With a knife?”
“The Bruno Famiglia owns the gun trade in this city,” he says and his face is calm as he shakes his head. “Poor bastards.” He grabs a magazine and loads the gun, cocking it back and leaning it against his shoulder.
He strides back out of the gun room and I trail after. Behind the bar, Joey’s on the phone, frantically talking to someone on a landline. Casso ducks under the counter, aims the gun at the massive guy’s head, and smiles. “Hand me that, will you?” Casso asks. Joey grunts something in Polish I don’t understand as Casso rips the handset away and bashes the guy in the face with it three times until the big man drops to the floor. Casso kicks him a few times for good measure, curses at whoever’s on the line in Italian, and slams it onto the cradle.
I stand there, stunned. The young guys get up and leave, hurrying out, probably freaked out at the sight of the gun. The stripper on the stage sighs and sits down, looking at her nails like this kind of thing happens all the time.
Casso drags Joey out from behind the bar and throws him into a chair, which is like wrestling a sleeping bear. The big man’s bleeding from a cut on his forehead and in bad shape, sweating profusely, twitching nervously. Casso paces back and forth, weapon cradled in his arms like a sleeping baby.
“I saw the guns,” he says.
“I can explain. See, uh, the guns, they’re just, they’re not ours. We’re just holding them. Yeah, holding them.”
Casso doesn’t smile as levels a flat stare at Joey. “Whose are they then?”
“Uh,” Joey says, and I sigh. The poor guy is too disheveled, beat up, and stupid for this. I almost feel sorry, except he did try to stab Casso earlier, and he is selling illegal Russian guns on the black market, so that makes him much less sympathetic.
“Here’s the deal,” Casso says, tapping the barrel of the gun against Joey’s knee, making the big guy flinch each time. Tap, tap, twitch, twitch. “I want this club and you’re going to sell it to me. If you don’t, I’ll come back with a lot more men, and we’ll kill you, kill your brother, and take this place for our own. We’ll get tangled up in the courts, and we’ll probably have to buy it from the state at auction, but it’ll be ours sooner or later. I’d rather do this quick and easy, which is why you’re not dead already. I’m giving you a day to talk to your brother, get your affairs in order, and settle on a price. Then I’ll be back. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Joey says, and I’m not so sure he does.
But Casso accepts it with a nod. “Consider us even then.” He punches Joey once in the nose, knocking his head back hard. Blood spouts down the front of the poor asshole. “That’s for trying to stab me, you stupid bastard.” He gestures at me and heads to the door.
I linger, but follow. Outside, the sky’s like an oven. “So that’s what it’s like to do your job,” I say quietly as he starts the Rover’s engine. He removes the gun’s magazine, makes sure there’s no bullet in the chamber, and tosses it all into the back seat.
“Normally, I’d send someone else to do petty shit like this, but since it’s sensitive, I decided to take it on myself.” He flexes his fist and grins. “I will admit that I missed breaking skulls a little bit.”
