"Shooting me would be the stupidest thing you could ever do. Tell me why you won't shoot me."
"I should shoot ya for being just that smug. I won't shoot ya because there had to be a reason. My employers - the Neck-less," he stopped himself and smiled at that, amused with his own turn of phrase. You could tell that it was the first time he had thought of it. "They have 2 years worth of bets with you. Two years of loans made and paid. You were a good risk right up until you weren't no more."
The man with the gun talked faster and faster. The thoughts seemed to be running out of him just as they occurred to him.
"That is a long game you were playin'. Ya set it up slow. Bigger and bigger bets. Paying off losses on time or almost on time, ya got people to sorta kinda trust ya. Which is news since these kinds of people don't trust each other much less a white boy like you."
"Ya married the Farfenelli girl, what, 18 months ago? All that money to bank roll ya. At least that's what it looked like from a distance. But ya do a little digging and she don't know nothin' about her man's card playin' ways. That was why I came here. Thought the pressure of her coming home from the ski trip and finding us here talking would make you sweat even more. I might hold off on shooting ya just to find out if that was your intention all along."
"The girl doesn't figure into this. All I ask is that if you are gonna shoot me, don't leave a mess here for her to find. I don't want her to go through that. But don't make me disappear altogether either. I don't want her thinking I ran off on her. She is fragile that way. Doesn't think much of herself compared to her name or her money and me just up and disappearing would do her serious harm. Better she should have to come to the morgue and see my face with a new hole somewhere on it. She's strong that way. Took care of her daddy while cancer ate him up. She could handle that."
"Wait. The girl is incidental? You set this whole thing up to get me alone in a room with ya, and the one thing that actually gets me alone in the room with ya, is a rich girl that you just have the hots fer? Omigod! What if ... Didn't ya ever think about the Neckless holding her until ya paid yer debt? Jesus, what a donkey ass gamble."
"I didn't lay it down perfect. I know that. It took me five years to find you and another two to figure out how to have this conversation without your Neckless listening in. I need you. I can help you. And we can both be filthy stinking, stupid rich beyond anything your employers or my momma could ever hope to deal with. That's the pitch. That's the angle. That's the hook."
The man with the pistol smiled at the man who claims to be his brother.
"I don't have money. I don't have access to money and you run a long game to get me in front of ya with a gun pointed atcha. Ballsy. Ballsy play. But you still gotta come up with the money for the Neckless or you get hurt badly. Or my rep takes a hit. And I figure my reputation is important to ya. How ya figure the play from here?"
The cool man smiled, "What? You don't have that kind of money laying around for when family needs it?"
The man with the pistol raises his eyebrow again and leans back in his chair and sips his Scotch. He wanted to like this man. He was starting to like him despite himself. That is how a grifter is able to work best. They engender trust and good will just because they have that something... He wanted to like this man.
"Why, specifically, did you want to meet me?"
The gun was still in his hand. The camaraderie, the funny little exchanges, the jokes. The gun had never left his hand. His forefinger still rested just on the outside of the trigger guard. His eyes grew colder as a resolve reasserted itself.
"I ain't leaving without the money. Wash that idea out of your head. Now, the specific question I just asked. I am not a patient man. My... heritage... has been ... Maybe it hasn't been a secret, exactly, but not too many people have ever been able to pin a connection to me and your Momma's operation."
"I have known about you since I was 18 or so. Momma may have kept everything in her head but Daddy kept a diary. He wrote about you a whole lot. I was envious of him teaching you to shoot so young. You beat me to it by 5 full years. Didn't seem fair. Took me a while to figure out why that all happened."
"You were being groomed. Hell, I was being groomed. The family business was intricate. The need for manipulation and glad handing was there. But so was the need for a well placed bullet. You and I were being prepared to carry on what my Momma had started and what our Daddy thought was his."
"I walked away from it just like you never stepped up to it. It wasn't mine. I didn't want to be a piece to somebody's else's puzzle. But I would never have thought of myself that way if I had not seen the way they catered your whole life for you. They paid for the private schools, the shooting lessons, they covered for you when you had your run ins with the law. They paid for all those self defense classes that you were so good at. They also made sure you never got a legit shot at those UFC tryouts when you were a kid. Too much fame is not the thing for a shadow to have."
"That's what you were meant to be, by the way. My shadow. I would be the face of the family. I would hold office of some sort. Momma hoped for Governor. You would be the muscle from behind the scenes that nobody ever saw coming until it was just too damn late. And it would all have been tied together in blood."
"Perfect plan except our Daddy had to go and die so young. No continuity. Nothing to tie the two of us together. Hell, nothing to tie you to her. So you got to go off and make your own life years before I did. Just like the whole learning to shoot thing all over again."
"But to answer your question, Daddy kept a journal. Stupidest thing a crooked judge could ever do, but then our daddy wasn't the smartest of souls that crossed the surface of God's green earth. It laid out who you were and where you were staying and who all you knew way back then. With that, it was possible to track you down. Not easy, mind ya, but possible."
As he talked he got up from the desk and slowly moved over to the safe hidden behind the glasses where the stranger had poured the Scotch. He punched in the numbers and pulled out two thick stacks of bills and pulled a few bills from a third thick wad. He was very careful that his hand never strayed too closely to the pistol there in the safe. He tossed the money on the desk while never closing the safe. The hook was set or he was dead. A few dollars more would not make a difference.
The man with the pistol made his way out of the house and walked three blocks down to a car parked in the shadow of an old oak. The car was in front of yet another old house with an iron fence weaving with age around what used to be one of the nicest places to live in this ancient neighborhood. He plopped down in the passenger seat. He sighed deeply and shook his head as looked at the attractive red head behind the wheel.
She only glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes. She knew that after these visits he needed to feel alone even if he wasn't, so she gave him what space she could. He sighed again and she knew this was a queue for her. "Did he play the long lost brother bit like you thought he would?"
"Played it out better than I thought. Played like he didn't have the money right up to the very end. Ballsy little bastard. Have to give him that."
The red head nods and asks, "Do we need to have Jimmy come in and clean the place or did you keep your gloves on this time?"
"No. No. We don't need Jimmy. I let him live. Gonna let him live long enough to make us a great big pile of money. It won't be easy to kill him though. He is just so damn likable."
End Chapter Two
