Did Jim Lick think he could send two punks - who I was sure were scratching their heads
over our being nowhere in sight - up here to take us out of the picture? Karel and I had been
driving separate cars the past few days and we were stalking these two jokers, not the other way
around.
The fat bald one stepped out of the back door to the garage, swearing at his cell phone.
Maybe he was upset that his partner wasn't picking up.
“This is a gun in your back, let's take a walk to my car,” I said.
“Dude, you don't know what mess you're getting yourself into here,” the fat bald one
said like he was trying to warn me.
“You're about to learn that your partner has been shot in the head and we are going for a
drive – I'd say you're the one with the mess right about now.”
Karel came around the corner, gave me a confident nod and whispered in my ear that the
dead guy was in his trunk – we didn't want police crawling around after all. His car was pulled to
the building. We guided the fat bald one into the back seat after removing any weapons and
giving him a nasty sedative. It's amazing how a grown man can cry when he sees a needle with a
night long interrogation at the end of it. Karel and I had rented a storage unit that would serve
nicely for an interrogation, but I wasn't sure how long before the sedative would wear off.
My cell started to buzz. “Yeah?”
“You idiot, now you have the Viola family on your ass. Congratulations.”
“Mihail, did you set all of this up?” I asked mockingly. “Hey let's meet for dinner, just
the two of us.”
Timothy Gilbert
Damage Control
279
Mihail hung up.
“He must have been watching us,” I told Karel. “How else would he have known so fast
what happened to his Florida guys?”
Karel whipped his head around, frantically trying to locate Mihail's car but to no avail.
“Let's drive around the block and see if we can spot him.”
“No, he's gone for the night,” I said. “He's not stupid.”
Timothy Gilbert
Damage Control
280
Tuesday, January 7th
5:35pm