Page 8 of Savage Lover

I just hope it’s not an anchor in disguise.

2

NERO GALLO

It’s Friday night. I’m waiting for Mason Becker outside an old abandoned steel mill in South Shore.

This place is a fucking trip. It’s right on the water and so huge that it’s bigger than the whole of downtown Chicago. And yet it’s completely deserted—abandoned since the 90s when the steel industry finally collapsed.

Most of the buildings have been demolished. You can still see the U.S. Steel sign all covered with weeds. It looks like the end of the world happened, and I’m the only person left around to see it.

Actually, this whole area is kinda shitty. They don’t call it Terror Town for nothing. But that’s where Mason wanted to meet, so here I am.

He’s late, as per fucking usual.

When he finally drives up, I hear his car before I see it. His engine is knocking. He drives a crappy old Supra, with a big long scratch down the panels where his ex-girlfriend dug her keys into the side of his car.

“Hey, why you so early?” he says, sticking his head out the window and grinning at me.

Mason is tall and skinny, with curly hair and lightning bolts shaved into the sides of his fade.

“You’ve got the wrong spark plugs,” I tell him. “That’s why your car sounds like a lawnmower.”

“Man, what the fuck are you talkin’ about, I just got these changed last week.”

“Who did it?”

“Frankie.”

“Yeah? Let me guess, he gave you a deal.”

Mason grins. “He did it for a hundred bucks and a baggie of weed. So what?”

“So he used the wrong plugs. Probably pulled ‘em out of somebody else’s car. You should’ve had me do it.”

“Will you fix it?”

“Fuck no.”

Mason laughs. “That’s what I figured you’d say.”

“So.” I slide off the hood of my car. “What do you have for me?”

Mason climbs out of the Supra, popping the trunk so I can take a look. He’s got three FN-57 pistols, a monster .50-caliber rifle, and a half-dozen .45s in the back.

They’re all different makes and models, the serial numbers crudely filed down. It’s not as nice as the stuff we used to get from the Russians, but they’re not exactly talking to us right now, seeing as we killed their boss a couple months ago. So I need a new supplier.

Mason brings his guns up from Mississippi. That state has about the friendliest gun laws in the country. You can buy whatever you like from pawn shops and shows, and you don’t have to register it after. So Mason has his cousins pick up whatever we need, then he brings them up the pipeline of the I-55.

“If you don’t like those, I can get others,” Mason says.

“How many cousins do you have?” I ask him.

“I dunno. At least fifty.”

“Does your family ever do anything but fuck?”

He snorts. “I sure don’t. I like to keep with tradition.”

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