James Ingelson pulled the long-black and armored sedan into a parking space in front of Franky’s tavern on Lake Street. He had collections to make and wanted to get them done before the weather broke for the worse.
He got out of the driver’s seat and took note
of the number of girls who were already on the sidewalk trying to attract a
patron. There was a steady flow of traffic on the strip at all times of day,
cars pulling up at the curb to place orders for dope: cocaine, heroin or
both…and other pharmaceutical grade chemicals if they should desire.
James knew the storm that was coming would be
fierce because the air-pressure was bothering the broken drum in his
cauliflowered ear, as it had been more days than not over the past few months.
Also, the heat was oppressive, but the humid
air had begun to blow, and even though it was blowing hot, it was laced with
cold streams, which told him that the storm-giants were on the march.
James was not a small fellow, he stood six
feet two inches, and at one time, before the Great War, he had been a ranked
heavy-weight fighter, but that wasn’t why the tough guys on the street stepped
out of his way when they saw him coming.
He and his brother Luke had been all up and
down Lake Street, from Excelsior to the Marshall Avenue bridge for the past few
months, earning a reputation among the local merchants, a reputation that put
him and his brother on good standing with all the pimps and players on Lake;
they were tough but fair, but it was his bosses reputation that preceded him,
and the fear that it invoked, that caused the hooligans to step out of his way
when they saw him coming, and James knew it.
His boss was the fearsome-giant, Karl
Thorrson, who, in a very short time had wrested control of the city from one of
its founders, a man every simply called the Colonel, though no-one knew how he
had earned the rank. It was Karl Thorrson’s reputation that mattered more than
anything else.
They were the new power, and after months of
bloody gun work they had vanquished the old…or so James believed.
He
went into Franky’s and stepped up to the bar with a smile for a couple of
hungry looking girls looking at him as if he might be able solve all their
troubles for a day or two.
James
said “good morning” to them, and then, as if on cue they got up-off their
stools, came over to him and started rubbing their perfumed bodies against him.
There
wasn’t much fabric between their skin and his, and he could feel every bit of
them as they draped themselves around his broad shoulders, purring in his ear with
their soft voices, expressing their marvel at how big his muscles were and
blowing lightly on his neck.
Just
as one of them had begun to press her hand against the front of his trousers James
heard some commotion from the back room before he saw Frankie coming out with
an envelope in his hand and apologizing like a schoolboy for making James wait.
He
took the envelope and said, “No trouble Frankie. I’ll just take these two with
me for the day, along with whatever they need to see them through…that’s all
the tax I’ll charge you…this time.”
Frankie
looked at his girls while he struggled with a response; he didn’t believe he
had the power to refuse. Even though it was not the way things were done, Frankie
didn’t want to test it
James
had just been joking, he hadn’t meant for the guy to take him seriously, so he
cracked a smile and slapped Frankie on the shoulder, though it occurred to him
that he could have gotten away with it, and that was good to know, he
thought.
The wheels had already begun to turn inside
his head as he planned on taking advantage another time.
“On
second thought, ladies,” James said. “I’ll take a rain check.
“We’ll make it a double-date with me and my
brother Luke.”
“Yaa,”
they chimed in unison, with a slight note of disappointment in their Swedish
lilt. “When you come, around we will be waiting.”
James
took the envelope from Frankie and bid them all a good day, leaving the bar to
continue his tour down Lake Street.
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