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“Shut up,” the ballsy guy threatened. “Keep your fucking mouth closed. They ain’t got shit on us.”
“Ain’t got shit on you?” I laughed. “You think my guys are in the habit of waking me up at four in the fucking morning for shits and giggles? You think I’d be here if I didn’t know for certain you were the fuckers who took down three jewelry stores under our protection?”
“Some fucking protection,” he snarled.
By way of reply, I raised the cattle prod, pressed it to his armpit and hit it.
When the fucker screamed, juddering in place like he was on the electric chair, I switched it off again. Direct contact to the chest would only trigger a cardiac arrest, and I didn’t want him dead.
Not yet anyway.
The shock had the bastard slumping, his body turning lax as he not only pissed himself, but hung like a dead weight from the hook. Only by the faintest movements on his chest did I know he was alive, and so did the others.
I turned to look at them. “That was on a low setting.”
The heavy gulped. “I-I don’t know anything, man. I swear.”
“What about you?” I asked softly, snapping the button on and off again, just long enough for the sizzle to whip along the air waves.
“I-I don’t know who the fence is, but I know his number is on Justin’s burner.”
I twisted around and found Tink leaning against the back wall, watching me work. “You find a burner on Justin?”
He nodded. “Password protected.”
The scrawny sniveler whispered, “The pin’s his birthday.”
I rolled my eyes—maybe the guy wasn’t as smart as I thought. Although he’d managed to breach three Thomson 0235 alarms so he wasn’t completely a fry short of a Happy Meal.
“You know what that is?” I asked, and when the heavy fed me the digits, I heard Tink moving around behind me, and knew he was getting the burner out of the pile of clothes for me.
“Here.” He passed me the phone, I input the code, and when it worked, I scrolled through the contacts.
Finding thirty names, none of them suspicious or titled, ‘The Fence,’ because that’d be too fucking easy, I shoved the phone back at Tink, grunting, “Recognize anyone on there?”
“I’ll check it out.”
I nodded as he backed off, leaving me with the three Stooges.
Sometimes, getting information out of people was easy. Then, others, you had to set them up with a transsexual hooker and catch themin flagrante delicto.One thing I could say about my job—it was varied and rarely dull.
“You’re lucky you’re dealing with me today,” I told the two conscious guys. “If it was my da, he’d be getting off on causing you pain. As it stands, I’m a man of my word. Don’t fuck me around, and you won’t suffer before you die.”
The sniveler started wailing. “W-We didn’t mean to piss off the Points. We swear we didn’t. We didn’t even fucking know, man. Why would we? Everyone knows Aidan Sr.’s fucking insane—”
“Then why did you? No one forced you to raid one of our storefronts.”
“Justin said—”
When the sniveling fucker’s voice waned, I arched a brow at him. “Treat me like your confessor, kid. It’s one way not to die in agony.”
“H-He had inside knowledge.”
Now,thatwas interesting. I narrowed my eyes at him. “From the jewelry stores?”
“N-No. From the Five Points. Someone told him that the store owners weren’t under your protection anymore.”
Carefully, I placed the cattle prod on the same table I’d picked it up from, and folded my arms against my chest. After my conversation with Da, and knowing we had more fucking rats than our sinking ship could hold, it didn’t take a genius to work out what had happened.
