Excuse The Obscene

You know that moment right before you fall; you know there’s nothing you can do to stop it so instead you try to prepare yourself for the pain. I’ve been suspended in that moment for almost a week.

I’ve been falling from the moment I saw Jimmy and Brian in that hotel room. First there was shock and confusion. Then there was anger and resentment. Finally came the pure moment where I realized I was entirely and brutally fucked. I knew the guys well enough to predict what would no doubt happen down the line.

With Zacky’s crew there is no walking away. The fact that he let me leave still breathing two years ago still shocked me. By now he probably regretted it and was waiting for the chance to kill me. Now that Brian and Jimmy had seen me there was no running and no hiding. They were smart and had a shitload of resources. It’s only a matter of time before they find me.

And Drew, Drew who has been my partner for more then a year and was the only person in my life I could possibly call a friend. If they find me they’ll sure as hell find him too and his death would be on my hands. The prospect wasn’t at all thrilling. Not that Drew and I were even on the best of terms right now.

There would be no real way for me to explain to Drew what had happened at the hotel without explaining to him the very reason why I hadn’t wanted to go to California in the first place. And there was no possible way I could do that. Talking about it would have to mean reliving it and that wasn’t something I could bring myself to do. So instead, Drew and I fought and fought and fought. He wanted an explanation and I wanted him to fuck off in the nicest way possible. Eventually we just stopped talking to each other all together; moving about the apartment as if the other didn’t exist.

So what do you do when you feel yourself falling inevitably? You drink.

I signaled for the bartender to get me another drink. I’d been sitting in the same stool for almost two hours and I was waiting until I was thoroughly drunk before I called a cab and went home to Drew. There was no more avoiding it. If I didn’t tell him now it was only going to cause a bigger problem between us. Not to mention it would be one hell of a shock when Zacky finally caught up to me. If I was going to come out and tell him everything then I wanted to be drunk enough to not feel any of the memories.

Twenty minutes later I was in a cab and it wasn’t long before I found myself standing in front of my apartment door. I unlocked the door and stumbled in, not bothering to keep quiet. If he was asleep then he would have to wake up anyways so we could talk.

A quick glance at my watch told me it was a little before midnight.

I looked around the apartment that I hadn’t been in since around four o’clock that afternoon. There was no sign of Drew lounging in the living room so I dragged myself over to his room and knocked once before swinging the door open.

“Drew, we should-” I didn’t bother finishing the sentence because Drew wasn’t in there.

I checked the bathroom and the kitchen before giving up and calling his phone. The voice mail picked up and the panic started to settle in. Drew’s phone was attached to him like a limb and there was never a time when he didn’t answer it.

I walked towards my room and stopped when I noticed a note sticking to the door. I recognized Drew’s scratchy hand writing and the panic died down. Of course he left a note. This whole Zacky thing just made me paranoid.

I tore the note from the door and focused my drunken vision enough to read the messy writing.

I’ll be gone for a few days taking care of business on the west coast. Pull yourself together enough to do a job; if you haven’t already given yourself alcohol poisoning and dropped dead.

Normally the bitchy comment about me dropping dead would have me pissed off but the words ‘business’ and ‘west coast’ commanded all of my attention. The panic set in again faster than it had left. I could feel my palms start to sweat a little and my heart race a bit. At least part of this reaction had to do with the amount of alcohol running through my system. The larger part of this reaction was that I could still remember clearly the look on Zacky’s face when he pointed a gun to my temple. Now Drew was out of my reach and could be going through any amount of shit right now.

I tried to force myself to sober up quickly and be reasonable. It could just be paranoia getting to me. Drew has done plenty of business on the west coast before; hell that was even where he met me. Chicago is actually the mid-west but Drew could easily get his geography fucked up. It was a big fucking country and for all I know he wasn’t even in California, let alone doing business with Zacky of all people.

But somehow the idea of Drew being tied to a chair and used like a punching bag for Zacky seemed so much stronger than the hope of him being somewhere in say, Detroit, safe and sound.

I grabbed my phone and tried calling Drew again. If he’d left hours ago then his plane should have long since landed. There was no reason for him not to answer his phone, despite all the problems we’d been having lately.

Thoughts began to bounce around in my drunken mind and I started to strongly regret the decision to get quite this drunk before coming home.

I pulled myself together enough to go to the kitchen and get a cup of coffee. After a few minutes my brain started to clear a little and I was able to reason with myself.

It was incredibly unusual for Drew to schedule business without talking to me first and even stranger for him to go do business in person without me trailing him for back-up. On the other hand, I’d been keeping secrets from him so he probably figured it was a good time to start keeping secrets from me too.

Exactly six minutes later, I had decided what to do. If Drew had gotten business all the way on the West Coast then there was only one man who could have set him up with the information.

I grabbed my keys before realizing that I had left my car parked in front of the bar. After a quick search I found Drew’s keys and before long I was speeding down the empty streets.

It was by sheer luck that I remembered where D. Knox lived. He was Drew’s number one informant and got a small cut from every job we pulled off that he found for us. After the first dozen or so times I trailed Drew here, we decided D. was trustworthy and wasn’t going to be any trouble so I had stopped following. I’d never actually met Knox and only knew him from the little information Drew felt it was necessary to share about him. If anyone had gotten Drew a meeting on the other side of the nation it had been Knox who was probably hoping to nail a big job and get a decent cut.

I parked the car right in front of the tall brownstone and jogged up the steps. I rang the bell twice before resorting to banging on it with my fists.

A few moments later, I could hear slight movement right on the other side of the door.

“Who the fuck are you and what the fuck do you want?” A 5’9 guy with dirty blonde hair and a slight bit of facial hair answered the door with a scowl on his face.

To anyone else, his stance would have seemed lazy and tired. To anyone with any experience, it was easy to tell that that was just a front. His upper body was tense and ready to pounce. The hand lying lazily behind the door looked like it was gripping a small pistol or some other lightweight gun. The door was opened just enough for him to show most of his bulky figure but not enough for most people to push through easily. I used to hate being short and relatively thin but in this world it comes in handy when people under estimate your strength, not to mention I could slip into places most muscled men couldn’t.

“Hey, Knox, we need to talk. Aren’t you going to be a gentleman and invite me in?” I raised one eyebrow and looked at him expectantly.

He looked me up and down before opening the door and letting me through. I caughtt a glimpse of the shiny pistol before he slid it quickly into the back of his pants.

“Who the hell are you?” Knox asked, shutting the door and leaning against it as if to block my escape.

I just smirked. If anything, I wouldn’t be the one needing to escape.

“All you need to know is that I’m Drew’s partner. Now I know he’s been here sometime in the last week. Where’d you send him?” I asked, getting right to the point.

“You’re supposed to be the great hired gun that Drew works with?” Knox asked, looking me up and down again. “And why the fuck should I believe that? And you’d better have a damn good reason to.” He moved swiftly and pulled the gun from his pants and pointed it at me.

Sometimes it was a good thing to have people under estimate you but other times it was just flat out annoying. I didn’t have time to fuck around with this guy.

Before he could react, I kicked the gun out of his hands and into the air. Seconds later, Knox found himself on his knees with me behind him and a gun pointed at his temple.

“Now I really don’t have time to play these games that I love so much so you’re just going to answer my fucking question.” I leaned down and whispered into his ear.

“Drew always did say you were a dangerous little thing, just had to test it out. You wouldn’t want me sending some cop or something after your partner would you?” Knox laughed, not at all bothered by the gun being held to his hand.

At least we know Knox really is trustworthy.

“I’m not really into the whole physical aspect of this thing so can you please let me the fuck up?” Knox said, voice still showing no sign of fear. If anything he seemed to be finding this some funny joke.

I stepped back and let Knox get to his feet. When he turned around I cocked the gun and waited impatiently for an answer.

“You’re standing in my house, pointing my own gun at me. That’s a little rude.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit it before holding one out to me.

“Where the fuck is Drew?” I asked slowly, emphasizing each word.

“What he didn’t tell you? Are you two having some sort of lovers quarrel or something because I’m here if you need a shoulder to cry on.” Knox looked me up and down and smirked.

“Do I need to put you back on your knees to get an answer?” I asked, ignoring the lovers comment.

“California. I know a guy there who wanted a job done. I told him I knew the perfect team. The guy’s fucking God over there. Big name means big cash.” Knox smiled like he was proud of himself.

The panic started to set in again, much stronger than before; one, because I was no longer drunk and two, because if there was anyone on the west coast playing God it was Zacky. Despite the terror building I clung to a small ounce of hope that it hadn’t been Zacky Drew went to see. I pushed the panic out of my voice enough to ask one more question.

“What’s this guy’s name?” I asked, my voice coming out stronger than I felt.

“Goes by Vengeance. He called me saying he needed someone to-”

I stopped listening after he said Vengeance. Before he could even finish his sentence I dropped the gun and was racing out of the house.

I started the car with record speed and started racing down the streets to the nearest airport. While I sped down the streets I tried again and again to call Drew but he still wasn’t answering his phone which could only mean bad things. But I couldn’t start thinking negatively yet. I swore to myself that I still had time. I could get to California before anything permanent happened.

Zacky had taken everything from me but he sure as fuck wouldn’t take Drew. He had taken my last life from me and there was no fucking way I was letting him take this one too.