Evan Arden 03 Otherwise Unharmed (12 page)

He
reached down to yank up his pants and glanced over at his younger buddy.  The other guy brandished a switchblade, which might have been scary to someone who hadn’t been around much larger knives. The knife-wielder moved his head back and forth like he was listening to some kind of phantom dance music.  Other days I might have laughed, but I wasn’t in the mood for stupid gang shit.  Moretti and Greco’s outfits had put them in their place plenty of times, and I was happy to do it again.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and centered myself before speaking.

“I’ve got a better idea,” I told him.  “You turn around and go back to the slimy cunt you crawled out of, and I won’t blow your dick off and shove it into the sewer.  I’m pretty sure this particular sewer flows right up to the river.   You know the river, right?  It’s where all of us who own your sorry asses work.”

The
older guy’s eyes opened wide, but the younger one just looked pissed.

“I think fuckin’ you up would be a lesson you don’t soon
forgit!” he sneered.

“Evan,” Lia whispered as her hand gripped my bicep
, “just give them what they want.  It’s okay.”

“Fuck that,” I spat.
  “I’ll give them what they fucking deserve.”

“You need to listen to
yo bitch,” the kid with the knife started to say as the other one tried to stop him.

It was too late, though.  I’d already had enough.

I pulled my Beretta out, pointed it between the younger kid’s eyes, and flicked the safety off.  I could hear Lia’s quiet gasp and watched the younger guy as he started to take a step back.  He seemed confused for a moment, and I thought he might actually be stupid enough to take a stab at me.

“Go ahead, you piece of shit,” I said calmly.
  My eyes stayed locked with his.  “Take a swing.  I’ll make sure my bullet doesn’t hit you fatally so you can watch me castrate you with that piece of shit blade.  Dick to throat, I’ll show you what a cut really looks like, and then I’ll slam my fist through your ribcage and fuck the hole I made.  What do you think of that?”

The
re was a long moment of silence as the kid’s eyes got bigger and bigger.  He didn’t seem able to move or speak.

“We cool,” the older one finally said as he
cleared his throat and took a step back.  He smacked his friend on the arm with the back of his hand.  “Come on and let these nice folks git on wid der business.”

They backed up slowly until they were a good twenty feet away, then turned around and quickly made their way back across the street
toward some nasty-looking liquor store.  I took a calming breath and turned to face an ashen Lia.

“Come on,” I said quietly.  “Let’s get inside before any other trash wanders up, okay?”

She could only nod dumbly.

“You fuckin’
mo-ron,” the older guy was saying as the pair reached the other side of the street, “don’t you know who dat is?”

I grabbed Lia by the arm an
d headed for the motel entrance before the gang-bangers started yelling out parts of my resume for everyone to hear.  She’d already seen and heard enough from my own mouth.  It wasn’t something I wanted her to see, but I wasn’t about to risk her getting hurt.  Demonstrating exactly who I was ensured her safety.

They knew better than to mess with the mafia.  We’d put them in their place before
, and we’d do it again.  Even though I was in their territory, they still knew power when they saw it.

Lia didn’t say a word until after we’d checked into the motel, found the right door, and hauled our bags inside.

“Are you going to explain that to me?” Lia asked quietly as she sat down on the end of the bed.

“Explain what?”

“For fuck’s sake!”  Lia stood up and put her hands on her hips as she glared at me.  “Explain all of this shit!  What are we doing here, and where are we going?  What the hell was that testosterone display outside?  Where the fuck did that gun come from?”

“I wasn’t going to let them
mug us,” I said with a shrug.  “This isn’t a great neighborhood, so I was prepared to deal with it.  I was in the Marines, so yeah—I have a gun.”

“Don’t you bullshit me,” she snapped.
  “That was hardly a little display of self-defense.  I am
not
stupid, and I’m not blind!”

I sighed and dropped my ass to the edge of the little desk and looked her in the eyes.  I knew immediately that she
wasn’t buying any of this shit and that holding off on answering her questions wasn’t going to work much longer.

“That guy
out there—he knew who you were.”

I rolled my eyes.

“How did he know you, Evan?”

I didn’t respond.  I didn’t even look at her.

I really didn’t know what to say.

“Fuck this,” she snapped.  She stood up, grabbed her bag
, and headed to the door.

Moving quickly, I stood between her and the door and placed my
hands on her shoulders.

“You can’t leave,” I said.

“Like hell I can’t!” she retorted.  “Am I a prisoner or something?  Is that what you’re saying?”

“No, but it’s not safe for you in this area by yourself.  You might have noticed that already.”

Her eyes tried to burn little holes in my forehead.

“I think I’ll be fine,” she said.  “I think all I have to do is tell anyone who tries to fuck with me that I’m Evan Arden’s girlfriend, and they’d just leave me alone, wouldn’t they?  Or do you have some code name I should use instead?”

Fuck.

She kept telling me she wasn’t stupid, and she was right.  I still hadn’t given her enough credit though.  She kept catching me off guard with her ability to infer the relationship between my words and the actions of others.  Maybe I was just used to chicks who knew enough about what was going on to turn a blind eye to their surroundings, and Lia didn’t fit into that category.  She was trying to figure this shit out, and she knew how to put the pieces together.

It wasn’t helping.

Lia must have tired of me staring at her and tried to push past me again.  I wouldn’t let her, and she glared nuclear bombs at me from her irises.

“Get out of my way,” she growled.

“I can’t,” I replied with a shake of my head.

“You
won’t
,” she snapped back.  “That isn’t the same.  I’ve already gotten rid of one dickhead who spent a lot of time controlling me, Evan.  I didn’t do that just to pick up another one.”

“Lia, I can’t let you go out there.  It’s dark and it’s the fucking murder capital of the world out that door.  You are not going out there!”

“Bullshit.”

“You want me to bring it up on the fucking internet?  You go look up this neighborhood!”

She paused for a moment and glanced from me to the door and back again.  She took a breath and clenched her teeth together.  The tension in her arms and legs told me exactly what she was thinking: one, she didn’t believe me, and two, she was considering punching me right in the face to get by.

There was an asshole inside of me who wanted to tell her to just fucking go and leave her on her own.  She was making all of this too
difficult, and I didn’t have the time to fuck around with it.  It was the same part of me that took over when I fixed my scope between someone’s eyes and pulled back on the trigger.  That part of me, however, apparently wasn’t in control.

“I need you,” I said quietly.

“What?  So you can sleep?”

It was snarky and sarcastic, and I
deserved it.

“Yes, but not just that.”

Her look softened, and she dropped her hands from her hips.

“I mean it,” I said with a softer tone
.  “I can’t let you go out there by yourself.  Fuck, I shouldn’t be out there, but it was the best option for now.  In the morning…”

I paused, felt my heart start beating faster in protest but continued
anyway.

“In the morning, if you still want to, I’ll take you to the airport and buy you a plane ticket to wherever you want to go.  You don’t ever have to see me again, but I can’t let you wander around this area of town at night.  You wouldn’t last an hour.”

Her eyes locked with mine again.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” she finally said.

I nodded, and she dropped her head and shook it slowly as she turned around and walked back toward the bed.  She turned abruptly and yelled at me.

"I don't know what's going on here
, but you're scaring me!"

Stepping
forward and reaching out with my hand, I cupped the side of her face and moved in to kiss her. She wasn't going to have any of that, though, and turned her head away as I leaned in.  I pulled back and ran my tongue across my lips.

"I'm not trying to scare you."

“Well, you are!”

My stomach tightened up on itself.  I couldn’t figure out any
way to resolve this with her and didn’t have the slightest idea what to do or say.  My normal reaction to anyone else would have been to sit down, shut up, and I would do what I needed to do.  With her, everything was ridiculously complex.  None of my usual responses worked.

“You need to stop with all the cryptic shit,” she informed me.  Her hands moved up to pull out the
scrunchie holding up her ponytail.  I tried not to get too distracted by the way her hair fell around her shoulders, but all I could think of was running my fingers through it.

“I told you
; I’ve never done the boyfriend thing before.  I have no idea what to do here.”

“Start by telling me what the hell is going on,” Lia said.

I sighed and rubbed my fingers into my eyes.

“I don’t know if that’s really the best way.”

“It’s a start.”

It was more likely to be an end, which was what had me on edge.  The thing was
, I was afraid she was going to walk out.  I even recognized it as fear though I might not have admitted it to anyone else.  If she left and I never saw her again, I wasn’t so sure I’d survive.  I had to do something to keep her with me a little longer.

“Tell me about you,” I said.  It was my last ditch effort to try
to delay what was coming.  “I hardly know anything about you, either.  You tell me about you, and then in the morning, I’ll tell you about me.”

It
gave me one last night with her and one last morning of waking up with her.

Lia looked skeptical, but I also saw a hint of resignation in her eyes
, which allowed me to breathe without my lungs feeling like they were being compressed.

“I don’t think what I have to say is all that interesting,” Lia sighed as she sat down on the edge of the bed again.

I sat down next to her and reached for her hand.

“I still want to know,” I told her.  “I’ll get something for us to eat, and then you can tell me
, okay?”

Li
a took a long breath and nodded her acquiescence.

Auburn Gresham wasn’t an area I’d spent much time exploring in the past, but when gang activity in the area began to push up into Rinaldo’s heroin trade, I’d been part of a group that came down and let them know exactly who was in control in the city.  The
message had been clear—go ahead and do what you want in the south, but don’t fuck with businesses in the north.  We even picked a line—the 47
th
Parallel.  It didn’t quite match Korea, but it still served as an easy reminder.  It was based on 47
th
street, not any line of latitude, but it served its purpose.

During my tenure in the area, I’d found the best pizza place and made friends with the owners.

“Is that who I think it is?”

Jack Anderson leaned over the cash register and stuck out his hand, which I shook.
  He was a dark-skinned man in his mid-fifties with white hair and stubble around his chin.  He’d been running the pizza place since his father passed away in the seventies.

“It’s been a while,” I said with a smile.

“You want the usual?” Jack asked.

“I haven’t been here in nearly a year,” I laughed.
  I couldn’t believe after all this time the dude still remembered what I wanted on my pizza.  He didn’t do the traditional Chicago style, but the guy made the best thin crust and sauce around.  “Can it still be referred to as a ‘usual’?”

“Well, I don’t know anyone else who ever orders it,” Jack said.  “Face it, Evan
, no one else thinks pineapple and mushroom go together.”

We laughed as he put in my order
, caught up on some neighborhood shit, and then said our goodbyes as he handed me my pizza in a cardboard box with a stack of napkins on top.  I hoofed it back to the motel and Lia.  She gave me a strange look when I told her what was on the pizza but seemed to like it once she tried it.

“So, where were you born?” I asked.