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Lips twitching, I murmured, “I pay you enough to install a garbage disposal unit. Anyway, don’t you have a shoot?”
“Sure, but when a man gets home, he don’t wanna be dealing with a bag of messy fucking diapers.” He stretched his arms out in front of him and cracked his knuckles. “Trust me, you should stay away from that bitch. Whatever magic she’s got between her legs, it ain’t worth it. Stay single.”
Dryly, and knowing he meant well, I merely said, “I’ve made my choice, and I’m going to stick to it.”
“You’re asking for a whole pile of shit to fall on your head.”
I smirked at him. “Isn’t that what we do best? Dig our way out of landslides of crap?”
My cocky retort had him rolling his eyes. “One day he’ll stop cutting you so much slack.”
“What day is that? When Aidan pulls his head out of his ass and cuts out the drugs? Like that’s going to happen any day soon. I’ll stop rocking around like I’m the heir to the Points when Aidan steps up and takes it back.
“You know I don’t want this much responsibility, but I’ve taken it all on the chin, accepted that I’m one of the few who can manage the workload. If Da doesn’t want his house of cards to come tumbling down, then he’d better accept that on some shit, I ain’t about to let him have his way.”
Sighing, Baggy just grumbled, “You’re a braver man than me.”
After I rounded the desk and made my way to the door, I clapped a hand to his shoulder and told him, “Brave? Nah. Just as whacko as he is.”
My bud snorted out a laugh as we left the office together. He headed down to the parking lot to sweep my car for bugs, while I hovered in the hall when I caught sight of Tinker hefting a baggy in his hand. The way he was holding it had me veering toward him, the problem of my future bride shelved momentarily.
“Tink? What’s up?”
“That feel light to you?” He tossed me the baggy.
“I’m not a set of scales. You’re the human fucking computer.” I threw it back to him and asked, “You think theDemoniosare short-selling us?”
He shrugged. “Either that or their delivery man is taking a pinch here or there.”
I eyed the many and varied crates in the stock room, some of which contained drugs, others contained guns. There were all kinds of shit inside them, some I didn’t even want to know about. We had our own little import business going down. The more exotic shit interested me the most—and I wasn’t talking about Colombian marching powder either.
This place was Tinker's domain, and while I’d been teasing about the human computer shit, he somehow managed to keep track of everything in our stock without computerizing any of our records, and had the knack of being able to heft something in his hand and figure out the weight.
To the nearest ounce.
It was insane.
If the fucker ever decided to do the crazy thing and ‘retire’ from the Five Points, I was pretty sure he had a career onAmerica’s Got Talent.
“I can talk to Juan Alonso—mention we’ve got product on the loose?”
Tink shook his head. “This is the second time it’s happened, but the measurements are marginal. Before we accuse the psychotic fuckers who are willing to dip their faces in ink, let’s maybe accuse their equipment?”
“Sensible,” I agreed with a hidden grin, because he wasn’t teasing. “What about here? These accurate?” I asked, eying the bags full of cash that the Dominicans gave us to launder through our fronts. We’d be shipping this out across Hell’s Kitchen in the AM, so I knew it would have been processed by now.
“Their counting machines work plenty fine.”
“Good to know.” I moved over to the crates that were wadded down with bank notes—my favorite kind of exotic product. Only I found a little extra something too; a catalogue.
“What have we got here?”
“A thank you from the Yakuza. One of the runners just brought it over. Was going to bring it upstairs once I’d finished here.”
I arched a brow. “They heard about my little collection?”
“They’d be dumbasses if they didn’t know you collect rare denominations.”
“Think they’re tailing me?”
