Chapter 19 - My Favourite Bartender

The young bartender woke up and wanted to wipe his eyes.  It was the first thing he did every morning.  It was the first thing he did waking from a nap.  His right hand would come up to his eyes and wipe the night away with his forefinger and thumb.  He wanted to wipe his eyes.  But he couldn't.  His hands were tied to the chair he was sitting in.

Tied was not entirely accurate, he realized, as he reclaimed more and more of the waking world.  He felt the pinch of plastic and eventually realized that it must have been plastic zip ties.  Done up tightly too.  He couldn't remember going to sleep.  Why would he sleep in a chair?  And in the bar?

He was in the bar.  The garage doors were all closed and the night sky could be seen through the windows at the top of each door.  It was quiet out.  He could hear the waves.  He smelled Scotch.  Vincent sat across from him on a chair turned around backwards.  Ginger.  Vincent wanted to be called Ginger now.

"Ginger?"

"Shhh.  I get to talk first.  It will let you know where we stand.  It will save time.  The boy is dead.  Shot dead with a bullet in his brain.  That changes everything, doesn't it"

Vincent... Ginger was talking with that weird British accent.  It had been months and he still could not get used to it.  "Who is dead?"

Ginger swung his arm around and down and the bartender felt a sharp pain in the middle of his forehead.  He even heard the "tock" as whatever was in Ginger's hand made contact.  Ginger held it up dangling from his forefinger - it was bartender's own bottle opener.

"You play stupid and I am going to do that.  Understand?"

"Vincent!  What,,,"  TOCK.

"Ginger!  Ginger!  Why the hell am I tied up?"  TOCK

"I keep hitting the same spot like that and the skin's gonna split. Don't insult me child.  I am not in the mood."

"I don't...."  TOCK

"Yep.  Split the skin already.  Gonna get blood in your eyes child.  Stop being stupid.  Better yet, stop counting on me being stupid."

"The boy," he hesitated, no tock so he continued, "the man who came to see you a couple of months ago has been shot dead." He worked very hard to make sure that last bit was not a question.

"Now see that, lad.  No pain at all that way."

The bartender swallowed. and blinked his right eye against the blood that was only just beginning to make its way through his eyebrow.  "You think I know some..." TOCK.  This one did not hit the same spot as he managed to twist his head in time.

"I am sorry.  Some of this may be my fault.  You see me as the doddering old bar owner who has shuffled around here for years.  You need to know - that is not who I am.  I am a man who is used to doing whatever is necessary to get what he wants.  Whatever that might be.  Doing this to you is not something I ever had to agonize over.  It is not something that will haunt me later.  It is simply what is necessary.  You need to understand that to save yourself a great deal more pain."

"What do you wan..." TOCK.

"STOP BEING STUPID!"

The young bartender glared at him.  Ginger sat back and sipped his Scotch.  "Let me help you.  I am smart enough to know that she let's me live here.  I am also smart enough to know that she would never do that without eyes and ears on the ground.  I know those eyes and ears belong to you."

"Ginger, what the hell are you talking ab...." TOCK

"I don't know...."  TOCK

"I'm not..."  TOCK

"Dammit, stop hitting m..."  TOCK

"Alright!  Alright!  I am paid to watch you!  But I never knew..."  TOCK

"Half truths get you a full smack.  Not an economical way of doing this."

"What do you want to know?"

"Well now.  That's almost disappointing.  I have done this kind of thing before and its always ended on an even number.  Like 12 or 20 or 30 or even 10.  We are only up to eleven.  Doesn't feel right to me.  But an agreement is an agreement.  You tell me how you send your reports.  How often you send your reports and if there is anyone else here that you know of who is supposed to keep an eye on me."

Ginger listened as the boy detailed how he called a certain number to make his reports.  The reports were usually monthly unless anything different happened.  There had to be somebody else reporting too.  When Ginger had broken his arm out fishing with the boys, the young bartender had thought nothing of it.  But he had gotten a call asking why he had not called about the arm.  He had no idea who the other could be.

Ginger thought back to the call he had gotten.  A woman's voice.  "Is this Ginger?"  It was not a voice he recognized.

"This is Vincent Cost," he almost said from too many years of fear.  "Yes.  This is Ginger."

"He's dead.  He was shot in the head.  I am gone.  Don't try to find me.  But if you ever loved him the way he loved you, do something.  Don't let her get away with this."

And the line had gone dead.  He was surprised how quickly it hit him.  He was crying.  Great racking sobs.   He felt empty.   So damn empty.  Carla came up behind him then and wrapped her arms around him.  She was asking what was it?  How could she help?  "Oh baby, how can I help you," he clearly remembers her saying.

They had been in her tiny little house.  The night was still except for an old man sobbing uncontrollably.  He did not know how much time had passed before he regained himself.  But he took a deep breath.  Exhaled.  And the last of Vincent of the island went with that last breath.

He turned to Carla.  It was Ginger looking at her.  She did not know, but she sensed something.  She felt the difference.

She reached to wipe away the last tear that was still on his cheek when his hands found her throat.  She wrapped both hands around his wrists and was just coming to the idea of going for his eyes when his thumbs crushed her wind pipe and he tossed her across the room.

As he walked over to her closet he watched her.  As she lay there trying to gasp for air, he had an image of the fish on the dock that would spasm and gasp in much the same way.  He threw several boxes and hats from the top of the closet before finding the shoe box.  He took it down and walked back over to her.

She may very well have already been dead by the time he opened the box.  "Shoe boxes full of cash in the top of your closet?  Really?  Did she tell you nothing about me?  Did you think because you took me to bed I wouldn't ever suspect you?  Carla I could have loved you.  I wanted to love you.  Of course you were the one she would pick to keep tabs on me."

"Having to kill you?  That's part of the punishment for coming after her.  Couldn't leave you alive to report me leaving this tropical hell hole.  But you are a month away from your next report.  I have time now.  I think.  But first I need to go down to the bar and fix a stiff drink and talk with my favourite bartender."

The boy had finished his story and was babbling now.  Repeating bits and pieces of the story again.  Anything to keep the room from filling with silence.  The bartender was scared witless of silence now.  As he rambled, Ginger poured himself a fresh Scotch and sipped at the bar with the bartender looking over at him.

Ginger reached over and under the bar and got another glass.  He poured the Scotch into it.  He walked back to his chair and used his foot to slide table over to them.  He sat the glasses down along with the bottle.  "You did well boy.  Now we are going to sit and drink and we are going to plan how we get me back into the States.  I am going to need help with what I am doing and you at least don't need it all explained to you.  Now I am going to come over there and cut you loose and your aren't going to do anything stupid right?"

The bartender nodded vigorously.  "You see boy, whatever she was paying you, I have an angle on enough cash to make you never have to worry about money ever again."  And with that he pulled his long knife from his belt and moved around the table.  He moved behind the bartender and with one hand took a hold of one of the plastic bindings at the boy's wrist.

The bartender never felt the knife as it slid into the back of his neck and ended his life.

Chapter 18 - Sebastian Amos Bradshaw

Wetta Bradshaw sat watching the sun settle down into the Pacific ocean.  She sipped her Scotch.  It burned - badly.  This was not the good stuff.  This was not the same bottle she had shared with her husband the day he was accepted to law school.  But it was the same brand.  A cheap bit of a reminder to their earliest taste of success.  It had only gotten better from there.

They had carved out a fortune for themselves so great they could never hope to spend it all.  Money had been their motive to begin with - they both thought this.  But it wasn't - not really.  It was the thrill.  They were good at it.  Nobody knew anything about the illegal empire they were building for themselves.  And then, by the time the whispering had begun, they were so powerful, so rich, so entrenched in the lives of all those others who thought they were powerful, that's all it ever was - whispers.

There had been so much money, so many enterprises, such a kingdom, that there had to be an heir - Sebastian Amos Bradshaw.  He was a beautiful baby.  Seldom cried.  Started sleeping through the night early on to his parents' delight.  He smiled often - that toothless baby grin that seduces the unsuspecting into the expecting.  He was a beautiful boy.

  He had been so bright too.  In the third grade he had tested so well that the school had wanted to skip him ahead - to high school!  She had consented to only jump ahead to the 6th grade.  He promptly failed miserably - much to his father's chagrin.

She knew better.  She had smiled at it.  All his friends were in the 3rd grade.  They let him rejoin his old classmates at the start of their fourth grade year.  His grades and scores never once ticked above average from that point on.  He would slip every once and a while and reveal that stunning brilliance when dealing with a teacher who was a bit too puffed up and proud.  Or a martinet.  He found ingenious ways to humiliate tyrants masquerading as teachers.

He took to poker like he had played in the womb.  And maybe he had in a way.  God knows his mother sat at a few tables while caring him. She did not really believe that he had inherited her ability to read people, to manipulate people - that just wasn't possible - was it?  Deep, deep down, way past any kind of rational thought, she felt that she had bequeathed him this very gift - always be THE authority in whatever place you found yourself in.

The incident with Clay Diamond had shown her that he was almost exactly like her.  Do anything, be anything, dare anything to win.  Win or die.  That was how she had lived her whole life.  And she saw that he was going to play the game by her rules too.  She let him keep that money.  But she made him pay with what she did to Diamond.  Lessons had to be taught.

This last thing though.  Going after the Farfenelli money.  She was content to let that mystery stay a mystery.  No one else was looking for it.  No one else would have been as much of a threat with that kind of power.  But her son?  Her son who hated her?  Her son who played the game by her rules?  That could be a dangerous situation.

And the people he had gathered to help him.  The twins, the red haired girl, Farfenelli's daughter and that horror story of a half brother of his - he was gathering up too many pieces.  He had to be stopped.  Had to be stopped.  And he had to be taught yet another lesson.

What better way than to force him to kill one of his own?  Once he killed his brother the red hair girl or the twins or all three would have come after him.  He would've had to put them all down.  An abject lesson in what happens when you go up against Wetta Bradshaw.

Wetta is the one that no challenges.  She always has an angle.  She always has a plan.  And her plans always end with somebody dead.  Always.

Wetta Bradshaw sat and watched as the Pacific ocean grew dark and black.  She sipped her cheap Scotch.  And she refused to cry.

Chapter 17 - Only Because She Is

He woke up.  His head thundered like the worst headache he had ever had.  His vision...  He was not sure...  It felt like one of his eyes was not quite aligned with the other anymore.  He started to blink his eyes and then realized he never again wanted to do anything quickly.  The blink stopped with his eyes squeezed shut and he slowly exhaled.  He had no idea how he had gotten here.

He had an idea of where here was.  The smell.  And the concrete.  Too quiet though.  But a prison.  Too many years.  To much time... doing time.  Some sort of jail.  A prison cell.  Too quiet though.  But a jail.

He opened his eyes again.  Nothing hurt.  His eyes seemed to be working together again.  He sat up and looked around.  He was on a cot.  It was against the irregular stone wall of a, yes, a cell.  A metal door was across from the cot.  A table sat between the cot and the metal door.  Never find a table in a prison cell.  The lights were recessed and a bit dim.  But he could still see the items on the table.  A tape recorder and the pink razor the red head had given him. Jamie Suka sat up and spat on the floor.

He rubbed his eyes and ran a hand over his bald head.  He walked over to the table and looked down at the tape recorder.  "Who the hell uses a tape recorder?" he thought.  The sentence, in his own mind, did not have the fake Russian accent draped across each word.  No one heard.

He looked at it for a bit longer and ran a finger across the folded pink razor.  Finally, his curiosity won.  He pressed play.  He heard his own voice raised in anger and disbelief.

"You shot her _______ son!  You shot her ______ son?  Are you out of your ________ mind?" It was his voice.  Thick with the idea of a Russian accent and, strangely, the curse words removed, edited.

His brother was the next to speak from the tape, "Will you let him finish the story?  Dammit Jamie!"  His brother's voice was rising.  It got quite high when he was excited.  It had taken Jamie months to master that.

His voice again,"He killed our best chance to find the damn money!  She got him to kill our best chance to find the money!"

The red head spoke from the recorder," He had his reasons Jamie."

"Yes!  Yes!  He had his reasons!  She scared him.  He acts like she is the scariest mother ________ in the whole damn world!"

"Only because she is," said the man with the gun.

The man with the gun smiled in Jamie's memory and then spoke up from the recorder,"She went to a great deal of effort to paint him as a threat to us.  She laid it out carefully and even convincingly.  She wanted me to go back and kill him for our sakes.  She wanted it to happen."

"Yes! And you did it!"

"I met her son.  He figured out that she had sent me.  He agreed that she meant for me to kill him.  He saw it as clearly as I did.  He just didn't see that he had to die."

This time it was Joey's voice,"Why?  Why did he have to die?"

"You've heard the stories.  You have heard what she has been able to do.  She can reach out and take anybody - ANYBODY.  I bought us time.  If I had met with her son and he walked out of that meeting, she would have known I was on to her.  She might still think I am on to her.  But the only way to buy us any time at all, was to shoot that man in the head."

His own voice again, " She played you!  She let you walk in with a gun and you never took the shot!"

"I told you about the snipers..."

"NO!  No!  She told you about the snipers.  She played to your vanity and you wallowed in it.  You only had her word that there was a single gun out there and that is exactly what she held you at bay with - her word!"

There was silence from the recorder for a bit.  A long bit.  Finally the man with the gun said,"I bought us a little bit of time against the most dangerous person any of us have ever run across.  We can't waste it."

"You bought us time against an old, withered ______ who knows how to intimidate cowards."  And with that last pronouncement, the tape player clacked off at the end of its recording.

A speaker snapped and hissed and Jamie Suka looked up at a speaker in the ceiling.

"'An old, withered bitch,' am I?  Some sort of con artist in your opinion Mr. Suka?  Nothing to fear?  Hmmm.  We'll see."

"You are an interesting man, Mr. Suka.  You like to kill people and yet you like to be funny too.  That is why you kill the way you do.  It is a part of your... 'act'.   You fancy yourself a comedian but a very, very dark one.  If it makes you feel anything at all, I appreciated your sense of humor.  I am interested in what you think of mine."

"I know about your need to mirror your twin.  Its why you have had to make yourself fat like him and talk like a cartoon's idea of a Russian.  I wonder how deeply that need to be exactly the same runs.  Let's see."

With that, the far wall lit up. It was not stone.  It was glass.  The glass was the wall to a matching cell.  The lights were out.  Jamie had only just taken his eyes away from the speaker, when the other room lighted.

Joey sat upright on the cot in the cell that mirrored the once Jamie found himself in.  The same table and the same recorder on the table.  The pink razor, or a copy, (which was the copy?), was on the floor.  It was stained with blood.  As was Joey's shirt and jacket.  As was Joey's throat.  He was quite dead.

Jamie Suka's scream was a thing of rage and murder and violent need.

The voice from the speaker laughed.  "If you don't hurry, the rate of decomposition will be too great and you two will never look alike again."  And laughter danced again from the speaker.

Vice Special Report: Killing Cancer Full Episode (HBO)

Chapter 16: White Sand and Blue Water

The beauty of the place to the eye was so simple.  White sand.  Sand like sugar had been poured out.  Or maybe salt.  Salt like around the rim of a glass the way the white sand ran around the edge of the coast.  Crystal clear teal blue water adding to the illusion.  But the heat could be oppressive.  Only the breeze gave you any relief from it.  

He stepped out of the small boat to feel the cool blue water rush through his beach shoes.  He turned back to the older man who had rowed him over from the larger island and tipped him another 50.  "Is that enough to keep you here until sundown?"  The older man nodded his head vigorously.  

The younger man lifted up his cap and ran his fingers through his hair and stared up at the sun.  Even with his oh so expensive sunglasses the glare was amazing.   He closed his eyes against it and let the last of his motion sickness wash away from his features in the heat.

He looked the tourist with his floral shirt and his white shorts and his rubbery beach shoes and sunglasses.  He stood out among the locals but blended in with the outsiders who came here by the hundreds.  Not that it would fool the man he was looking for.  

He made his way straight to the little club just off the beach.  The front wall was a series of garage doors all opened against the heat.  Ceiling fans jousted with each other - each one spinning in time to its own rhythm.  Every bottle of beer in front of every customer was sweating profusely - a testament to cold in the heart of a sinful heat.

A young black man was behind the bar and greeted him with English flowing with a Caribbean lilt.  He smiled back and ordered a beer.  The bottle was beheaded - expertly - and placed before him.  He sipped it and sat quietly.  He turned his back to the bar, rested his elbows on it, and smiled.  The Cool Man knew this was someone's idea of heaven.

Just not Ginger's.  He would hate the heat and the smells.  He would have preferred air conditioning and an excuse to wear a coat and tie.  This place, this paradise, would be hell for Ginger.

Ginger walked in from the rear of the bar, away from the garage door wall that faced the beach.   The years had not been kind.  His skin was loose and wrinkled and his head was completely bald.  

There was no coat and of course no tie.  His khaki shorts and blue t-shirt would have been all wrong for the Ginger he remembered.  But they suited this man just fine.  His shoulders were slumped in a way that Ginger's never were.  This really could have been a completely different person.

He ambled behind the bar, reached into the cooler and took out a beer.  The younger man seemed surprised - like this never happened.  The man who used to be Ginger pulled the opener from the back pocket of the younger bar tender, decapitated his beer, and took a long, long pull from it.  He looked down at the bottle of beer in his hand with a wistfulness that gave the impression that it was the first he had had in too many years.

He smiled at the cool man.  "How the hell have you been boy?"

The other bar tender's mouth dropped open at the sound of Ginger's English accent.  He had never heard Vincent speak with anything other than a South Georgia drawl.  And he had never seen Vincent drink an ounce of alcohol.

The cool man smiled a toothy grin at him.  "How long has it been since you had an icy cold beer?"

"Since the day I ran from your mother.  I like living more than drinking and there was no way in hell I was going to be impaired if she was looking for me."

The cool man stood a little straighter.  "Ginger, she didn't send me and I am not going to tell her I found you."

Ginger laughed long and hard at that.  "Boy, if you found me, it just means that she decided some where along the line to let me live.  You may be good kid.  Hell, you ARE good.  But she is the best there is."  He watched the younger man start to say something and then let it go.  

Ginger sipped his beer again.  "You coming here - its given me a little bit of ME back.  I think maybe, as long as I stay here, in a place I hate, maybe I can relax a bit.  Speak with my own voice.  Have a pint once and again.  Grow my hair back out.  Be just a bit more me."

The younger man just stared at him.  Ginger's fear of his mother was only matched by his reverence for her.  "Ginger, you honestly think she's figured out where you are, decided its enough of a hell for you, that it is a suitable punishment for you?  You really think she is that devious?  That calculating?"  The cool man said it with a laugh just out of his voice.

Ginger grew more serious in response. "Boy, it is the only thing that explains why I have lived this long."

The cool man shook his head at the man who had been like a father to him.  Ginger smiled at him.  "You know boy, for someone so smart, you..."the words seemed to leave him.  "Your mother is a blind spot for you.  You never have given her enough credit.  Even going back to that business with Clay Diamond.  She had it all worked out before you ever walked in and you never saw it."

"Not all of it," the younger man said with a wink.

"Just because she let you keep the money?"  Ginger watched as the boy's face shrank into itself.  "She knew that Diamond was your straw man.  And she made him pay for it.  What?  You think that mugging was a mugging?  Really?  See?  Blind spot."

They found a table after that.  More beers were ordered and an early dinner too.  They sat and talked about the old days and cards and money and the family business.  Ginger let the boy have this moment.  He let it play out like it really was just two old friends talking about the good old days.  Finally, he sat his last beer down and asked, "Why did you come to find me, boy?"

"I need help.  I think I know how to be free of her.  I have an angle.  More money than even she could hope to fight.  I just have to get to it.  For that, I need muscle.  I need someone who isn't afraid to put a hole in somebody's head at a moment's notice.  I need someone I can trust and who has resources of their own."

Ginger held his hands up.  "Son, I don't have all the contacts I had ten years ago.  And even I ain't ballsy enough to go up against your mother."

"Ginger, I know that.  I respect that.  I wasn't talking about you.  I just need your advice.  How do I track down my brother?"

Chapter 15: Deathly Quiet

The cool man got out of the back of the black Lincoln and turned back to offer his hand to his wife.  She took his hand and slid her right leg across the seat and out the door until the improbably long heel of her shoe crunched down into the remnants of ice from one of the last cold nights of the year.  He smiled as she came up out the car with just the vague outline of a memory of a circus performer on stilts.  She squeezed his hand - hard.  "One comment about about a trapeze artist or a lion tamer and you will sleep alone tonight," she threatened.

"Dum da dum da da DUM dum da da," me mumbled musically under his breath followed by an all together too loud for the time of night, "Yowwwch," as he shook his fingers free of her squeezing hand.

They laughed together and he tried to kiss her as the night doorman opened the warmth of their building before them.  He finally managed to land the kiss she had worked so hard to pretend she did not want, but it took him until the elevator was almost to their floor.  The doors opened and they walked to their apartment door arm in arm with his fingers now tangled in the straps of the shoes with the too high heels as she walked barefoot with her head on his shoulder.

They found themselves in their bedroom and peeling out of their clothes.  Not in the rushed way of that first time.  Not in the hungry way of that time in the cabin in the Poconos.  But in that languid way - that casual way that had become comfortable and familiar.  She turned in her nakedness and the light from the lamp showed the goose flesh across the top of her left shoulder as it was just a bit too cold for her.  She slid his old Lone Star Beer t-shirt over her head and as she reached up to pull her hair free of its collar, the shirt teased up a view of the curve of her bottom where her legs made peace with the rest of her body.

That view, that glimpse had been enough.  The night, the dinner, the play, the flirting in the car, the stolen kiss in the elevator - they had all hinted.  But they were not a couple new to being in love.  The hints now, were just that, hints.  They could be ignored or overlooked or even missed.  But not this time.

She turned to look at him and his face spelled it all out in vulgarity and passion.  She forgot what she was going to say and simply inhaled, deeply.  He was across the room - deliberately - smoothly - gracefully and one arm was around her waist and the other hand gripping her hair before that inhaled breath had ever cleared her lips.


Later.

The t-shirt was on the floor near the closet door and she was sleeping in the middle of the bed with a slight snore rustling the air.  He sat in a chair across from the bed still naked with an empty rock glass in his hand.  He was smiling.  He would periodically realize he was smiling and make himself stop.  And then later, realize again, he was smiling.

He wanted more Scotch.  He opened a drawer in the dresser next to the chair and pulled out a pair of sleep pants.  He pulled them on, not bothering to tie them and picked up his empty glass from the arm of the chair and walked back down the hall to the den.  He walked straight to the bar where the bottle of Scotch sat.  The bottle was open with its cork laying on its side by the bottle.  He sat his glass down, poured two fingers, replaced the cork in the bottle and then returned the bottle to its peers on the shelf behind the bar.

He sipped his Scotch and savored the other man's patience.  He never left a bottle of Scotch uncorked.

He walked around the bar and looked out the windows of his apartment with star light not revealing a thing.  He leaned back and propped his elbows against the bar.  He let the silence stretch out and again felt an appreciation for how the man was attempting to sow fear.  He was quite honestly impressed.

He stood up straight.  Sipped his Scotch and sighed.  "You've met my mother," he said in a conversational tone.

"Let me guess," he continued.  "She told you there was no money or maybe, just that I had no way of tracking it down.  She told you that besides the love of my father, the two of you had another thing in common - my hatred.  She told you that I meant to ruin you and eventually her too.  But that I am a particularly twisted bit of evil and that I could not do you the damage I felt you deserved until you trusted me.  Until you counted on me.  Until you loved me."

"She told you some version of the story of Clay Diamond and how she pays for his care to this day.  She makes me out to be a monster.  but not someone you should be afraid of.  You should feel insulted.  The idea that I could play you the way I have played a hundred other suckers over the years - insulting.  A fatal bit of disrespect."

"Here's something for you though.  Our father has been dead for years and people still call her the 'Judge's wife.'   She still runs a multi-million dollar outfit from Houston - Houston of all places!  She keeps the Mexicans and the Russians and the Italians and the Colombians and the Chechins - the bat crap crazy Chechins! - in line."

"And the whole damn time she lives in a little house just outside Crosby!  No gated community or armed guards patrolling around.  Just a little house in the middle of small town nowhere -  and the absolute certainty of EVERYONE involved that there is not a single solitary angle that she has not seen.  Not a single action you can take that she is not prepared to blow up right in the face of the person you love most!"

He wiped his mouth.  Took a sip of his drink.  Realized he was breathing deeply.  How loud had he gotten?  He paused to listen.  He calmed himself as he could only hear the sound of his heart thumping in his ears.  In seconds, he was the cool man again.

 It got deathly quiet.  He could just make out the sound of the not quite snoring coming from the bedroom.  He brought the glass to his nose.  The vanilla was just coming to ascendancy.

"She does not take an action she does not need to take.  If she can get a Russian to take out a Mexican so the Chechins think twice about her bit of the drug trade..."

He sipped his drink again.  He shook his head.  "She sent you here to kill me.  You might not have even known that you were going to kill me when you got here, but she sent you here to kill me.  Or she might have hoped I was better at the violence than she ever trained me to be.  Maybe she thought I would kill you.  I get that part.  And that is what made me walk in here seeing that bottle on the bar.  I know that its just possible that she wants me to kill you and I will not give her that satisfaction.  But then again," and he laughed at this,"she could have been counting on that little bit of defiance on my part to be just the opening you needed to do the job."

The other man, the unseen man, the man with the gun laughed at this.

The cool man's eyes widened at the sound but soon joined in the joke.  He could not tell where the laughter was coming from anyway.  And he saw the humor.  The man with the gun really did NOT need his help if he meant to kill him.

"How did you know I met with your mother?"

The cool man sipped his Scotch.  He did not smile.  He would not let himself smile.  He was giddy with life - with victory.  But he would not smile.  He was actually going to live through this night.

"My mother is the only other person I know who truly appreciates how under rated that particular brand of Scotch really is.  She loves the way the vanilla comes out so late in the experience."

The man with the gun nodded his head from the darkness knowing the gesture was for him alone.  With that, he smiled.  It was a lonely smile. A resigned smile.  The road ahead was going to be so much harder than he had ever thought it would be.

And then he shot the cool man in the head.