Page 53 of Kingpin
“I don’t want you to go,” I kid.
“I know, but I have to,” she says, beaming. “I’ll see you in a few hours, okay?”
I sigh as I let her leave.
“Okay.”
She leans over and kisses me softly on the lips, then she gets out and walks into the hospital without looking back.
When the sliding glass doors close behind her, my phone chimes again. I pull it from my pocket and read the message from Charlie.
Charlie:We followed him to a house. 1212 Douglas Ave . . .
This time, I send a reply message.
Me:Go inside and say hello. I’m on my way.
It’s a decent-looking house from the outside. Medium-sized with red bricks and a short little driveway with lots of cracks in it. It’s not the driveway or the house I hone in on—it’s the black Lincoln Denali parked out front. The second I pull up to the curb I know it’s the same vehicle from Isle of Capri. This is the house of the motherfucker who tried to shoot me in my own casino. This is the guy who sent bullets buzzing over my head, only inches away from Alannah.
I park across the street from where Tommy’s Maroon Durango is sitting, and I quickly make my way inside. I don’t waste time looking around like you see in the movies, because all that does is guarantee that you look suspicious to everyone who might be watching, plus give them multiple angles to see your face. I keep my head down and speed-walk up the sidewalk. Skinny Joe opens the door for me so I don’t have to knock, and the second I enter the old house, I see my crew standing around a black guy who’s tied to a chair with thick rope in the middle of the living room.
The house looks like it can’t possibly belong to just this one guy, because it’s neat and tidy inside. There’s no clothes or porno magazines on the floor. There’s bookshelves covered with books and crystal ornaments. When I see it all, I start to wonder if we’re going to have company soon. We might have to make this quick, so I turn my attention to Charlie, who’s standing over the black guy, wearing blue coveralls and holding a tiny wooden baseball bat that’s already got blood on it.
“Okay,” I say, glancing at the bald kid with the blood dripping from his mouth onto the stomach of his black t-shirt. “So, tell me Charlie, who the fuck is this guy?”
“This here is Anthony Bennet. He works at Lumiere Place,” Charlie says, pointing the bat at the kid’s face. “I asked around about the car you described, and a few of our people said they recognized it. So, I went to the places they said they saw it. It was too fucking easy to find this guy dropping off his grandma at bible study this morning. We spotted him and followed him back here. Anthony was just telling us about his employer, Abram Baskov. Ain’t that right, Anthony?”
The kid puts his head down like he’s ashamed. Blood drips from his mouth, and I can see his face is already swelling up. The guys didn’t waste any time putting Charlie’s bat to use.
I step in front of the kid and size him up. He’s skinny, maybe a buck fifty-five, maybe five-foot-nine or somewhere close to it. He doesn’t have any hair on his head, and he looks like he can’t be any older than twenty-two. I bend over until my face is directly in front of his. He doesn’t look up at me, and it makes me madder.
“A couple of nights ago, you had all the balls in the world,” I say softly in his ear. “You parked your fucking ride outside the restaurant of my casino, and you confidently shot at me while I was having dinner. You had a lot of fucking balls then. So, why don’t you lift your fucking head like a man? Look at me, you motherfucker!” I scream, and the kid jolts in his seat.
Slowly but surely, he raises his head and makes eye contact.
“There he is,” I say with a smile. “So, Anthony Bennet, do you know who I am?”
He nods his head.
“And what do you know about me, Anthony?”
“Nothing,” he whimpers.
“Nothing? I’m confused. If you don’t know anything about me, why’d you try to kill me?”
“He told me to, but he didn’t tell me nothing about you.”
“Who the fuck ishe?”
He hesitates like he doesn’t want to be a rat, but we all know he’s going to tell.
“Abram,” he says, then he lets his head slide down until his chin is in his chest.
“What exactly did Abram tell you, Anthony?”
“He told me he had something he wanted me to do. Said he’d pay me five grand. So, I told him I was down, and he showed me a picture of what you look like. Then he said he knew you had reservations at some casino where it’d be easy to get you. So, I went there at the time he said to go, and I did what he told me to do.”
“Oh, no you fucking didn’t, asshole,” Skinny Joe barks from his seat on the plastic-covered couch. “You tried, but you fucking missed. You’re a shitty shooter, Anthony. Not a good trait for a penniless, freelance hitman who lives with his grandmother.”
