Chapter 7

This time, nearly everyone was surprised ... really astonished in fact, that I’d walked back in through the front door under my own pegs. The word had gotten out that I was expendable and had been taken off for a ride already. I just grinned shook my head at Otto that I didn’t want another beer and then I pointed my left index finger upwards to show that I was heading back up to see the Boss, again. Knuckles saw me heading that way, further down towards the back end of the bar, and the big ugly Bruno charged straight for me. Knuckles did the downstairs enforcing was the bouncer for the bar, so I guess he thought that he was first in line to make the boss’s day.

Instead, I nimbly just ducked under his bull rush while stepping aside and tripped him up hard with my right foot. He about flew halfway across the bar room and clipped his head smartly against the side of an old oak table. The antique wood came out the better after the collision. Knuckles stayed down for the count, probably with a worse headache to come later than Mick was already enjoying.

No one else even thought about stopping me as I climbed back up the stairs to the Boss’s office. I knocked three times hastily, merely out of misplaced courtesy, and let myself in.

“Mr. O’Neil,” I said, taking a few steps inside the door, “I still believe we have a few things left to discuss ... first of all, you do still owe Pilsner and myself a hundred dollars each. With the interest service accruing on that debt, oh for about the last half hour or so, let’s round that off to say two hundred dollars, now for each of us.”

It must have been the easy smile that I gave him that pushed him over that final violent edge of insane fury, as he pulled out his favorite Colt .45 automatic from his jacket holster and quickly fired six consecutive shots are me, all of which oddly just missed me and smacked into the hardwood door behind me instead. The chances of a fairly good marksman and war-veteran like Connor missing six shots in a row had been slim, but not infinitesimal, especially with his hands now shaking in outraged fury. Seeing me smiling, he just stared at me in complete disbelief as the barrel from his automatic smoked its spent discharge gently in the air.

This was as good of a time as any to help myself to one of his big leather guest chairs right in front of his desk, so I seated myself, still grinning like a complete fool.

“As I told you earlier, Mr. O’Neil, some things around here have changed fairly significantly since last Saturday night. Drake is now a completely insane flaming skeleton that can throw fire and fly and he wants to burn down most of the West Side, using us as kindling wood. As for me, well yes ... I’ve changed too, rather differently but not much less significantly. Chances are, Mr. O’Neil, that without too much effort on my part, I can find the exact odds ... the precise likelihood of you taking that gun and putting your last remaining round right into your own head. Or ... the statistically even more likely chance that you’ll just keel over in the next minute or two with a stroke, just like your father had. That temper of yours will be the death of you, unless you can learn to control it ... and quickly. Feel your brain pounding? That’s your blood pressure climbing at the rate of a rocket! I’d try to relax, if I were you ... and pretty damned quickly too!”

“You’re causing this!” He gasped, “And trying to kill me!”

“With just a single thought, yes I could kill you ... believe me when I say that I can, and unfortunately may yet have to, if we cannot right now come to an understanding, you and I. With just a thought, I could find the odds of your dying tonight far more easily and in more unique ways than you could possibly believe. But I would prefer, honestly, that those odds remain statistically unlikely.”

“What then do you want from me?” He groaned, closing his eyes tightly and dropping his gun hand down to his side, trying to calm his rampaging temper.

“To talk and reach a few understandings, either with you ... or else with your replacement. Yes, I could kill you with just another thought from where I stand, but trust me ... I’d rather not. I am reluctant to do this for several good reasons, the first of which is that I’d like to remain a better person than you are. I’ve never killed anyone, directly with my own hands anyway ... and except for immediate self-preservation, I don’t propose to willing start doing that sort of thing now. Secondly, while I could think of several of your lieutenants that might make better bosses of our neighborhood than yourself, change ... especially violent change, is always bad for both business and local stability. Unfortunately, replacing you right now with anyone else would only help further Drake’s immediate plans. He wants war, instability and change ... perhaps sometime later, but with the South Hell in turmoil that would be too convenient for him to ignore. Lastly, there is the concept of working with the devil that you know. You’re not a good man, Connor O’Neil, but unlike your insane father, you’re not an especially bad or evil man either. Odds are, with a little bit of therapy, you might be able to better manage that raging temper of yours. Perhaps even you can make a stronger effort to use your power, wealth and authority to make South Hell and perhaps even the Abattoir nicer, better places to live. I’m willing to try and work with you.”

“Work through me, you mean.” He muttered, taking a few long deeper breaths as his nerves began to calm down, lowering his blood pressure just a bit. “You’d become the boss, then ... in all but name.”

I shrugged. “Think of it instead as my being there to offer you friendly advice. Your tendency to lose control can lead to mistakes, most of which you really can’t afford at this time. Drake is insane ... and he’s secretly gathering an army to come here and throw you out on the street! I’d prefer that this wouldn’t happen ... but really, that decision is up to you right now, you’re still the Boss ... and can remain as such, assuming we can come to a complete understanding between us ... or you can bet your life that even if you try shooting me at this close range your last bullet still somehow won’t hit. Chances are that while trying to expel that last shell casing your gun stove-piped it anyway.”

When I considered all of the odds and ramifications, during my walk back to the Arcade, I eventually calculated that the chances weren’t much better than a coin flip that he could in fact calm down enough to really see and embrace reason. Even now, at his last and final chance, it was barely a 62% play ... but that was just enough.

Connor looked at his gun one last time and then at me and then he slowly aimed the weapon up towards the ceiling, away from me and slowly pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The weapon, as I predicted, was jammed. He cleared the shell, released the old empty magazine and swiftly slapped a fresh one into the weapon and worked the slide, loading the first bullet hot, ready to be fired. He didn’t quite aim the weapon towards me once more, but neither did he appear to be ready to put it back away.

“Mick and the other two boys, Sean and Caspar ... what happened to them?” He asked, rather calmly, but with more than a hint of curiosity.

“They had an accident while taking me out for that ride you promised.” I said, still grinning while my thoughts kept calculating and recalculating the ever shifting odds. “One of those one-in-million sorts of things, being taken out hard, in a flash by a racing drunk driver running a light. Mick got his bell rung and will be fine after a day or two of rest. The other two, Sean and Casper ... they’re for the meat wagon. I can’t truthfully say that I’m sorry for their loss, because chances were certain that they were about to kill me without any remorse, and unlike you, or Mick, there was just no percentage in trying to sensibly reason with those two. As for me, I’m just fine ... thanks. Not even a scratch.”

Connor’s patience held and after another pregnant moment of thought he abruptly shoved his reloaded gun back into his shoulder holster and after a loud sigh, reached across the desk for his whiskey decanter. He poured himself a stiff three fingers of the really good stuff and then he poured another stiff trio of the golden elixir into a glass for me. I needed it by now; my headache was hammering me from the inside, desperate even for a short mental rest from probing and shifting the probabilities of getting the boss to see reason ... and hopefully for the long term.

“To peace then.” He muttered, offering to clink glasses with me in formalized agreement. I obliged, and we enjoyed our drinks with a moment or two of silence. Then with a louder sigh, he pulled open the upper right hand drawer of his ornate desk and pulled out a large metal strong box and then groped in his pockets for the key. The chances were virtually zero that he was pulling out another gun, so I just sat back in the big comfortable leather chair and sipped my drink. He counted out two hundred dollars onto the table twice. He then paused and did it all over again, adding another four hundred dollars to the stack and then offered it to me.

I took it. It was mostly all tens and twenties, well circulated and undoubtedly all genuine green-stuff. From what I had heard, Connor didn’t work the counterfeiting racket. Probably only due to the lack of having a good artist to make the plates and do the printing.

“That settles the debt ... plus double for the misunderstanding and your inconvenience. No hard feelings?” Another clink of the glasses was offered and accepted, followed by a topping up of our glasses. His brain was still trying to wrap itself around what had happened but he couldn’t make any sort of internal sense out of it.

“None at the moment,” I sincerely replied, “Thanks. On the other hand, if you’re willing to discuss ancient history ... I do believe that your late father does owe my late father a rather more significant debt. I think you know the details well enough, I’m sure Smiley bragged about it to everyone in the entire neighborhood back in the day. That was the main reason supposedly, the shame afterwards, that caused my father to take his own life.”

“The details ... yeah, not much mystery about that. Your father gambled you know, sometimes more than he could afford, but everyone said that he was something of a lucky bastard. His family in the old country, I forget those details, had money and he came to Empire City right at the end of Prohibition with a decent chunk of it. This place was a bar even then and he bought it, the whole building. My dad had always coveted this place, especially as soon as Prohibition was over and he could go legit in the liquor business. An old Irish street pal of his had once owned it and now dad wanted the place back. He hadn’t even known the joint was up for sale until your dad bought it and turned it into a sweets shop. Anyway, he encouraged his habit of gambling but your dad always had a bit of a lucky streak and kept himself out of debt, even when times and business here wasn’t good. So, dad created a scam ... a rigged college football game, I think, where he made it seem to be certain that the favorite team had been paid off so that the long-shot would win. Then he stung him, deep and way out of his ability to pay, so dad got the paper for this place! Like you ... your old man was always full of crazy ideas about how to improve South Hell and he was fixated on winning that long-shot to finance his plan. That, I think, is the real reason my dad scammed him ... honestly, I think it was done to try save his life! Your father wanted to directly take on the biggest property owners of the entire Westside and Smiley was sure that they were about ready to intercede to stop him ... violently. You say it was suicide ... that he killed himself afterwards, but my dad heard different rumors that say otherwise. On my father’s dead soul, probably burning in hell, he believed that those slumlords had him killed shortly afterwards anyway, as a warning to anyone else who might have big ideas around here. All dead and buried now ... and I hope stays, old history ... don’t tell me you’re still sore about that?”

So he thought, and really believed, that my dad’s suicide was really murder? Well, that was a new wrinkle that I’d never even considered before up to this very moment ... but it didn’t, for now, change my immediate plan.

“It wasn’t right what your father did ... or what it caused my poor mother to do afterwards to pay the rent in our shitty tenement and sometimes put food on the table. I was just a teenager when they found her, throat slit by one of her johns in the shitty creep joint where she was working. She had begged your father for help, anything, even a real job somewhere where she could make ends meet and he just laughed at her. That forced me out on the street, living in the gutter with Pilsner. Now I was never going to make much of myself even if I’d stayed in school, but Pils had brains ... he could have been something as long as either of us had one parent left to put even a modest amount of food on the table, instead of forcing us to live and steal, or die, out on the streets. Yes, it’s old history between us ... but it will forever be a lingering debt between us. I’m not a fool, and know that neither of us can change the past ... but perhaps we can make the present a bit less conflicted and problematic between us. I propose that a minor settlement here and now might make our longer term relationship a bit less complicated.” I offered a faint veiled hint of a threat there at the end. I think he had started to understand just how the current arrangement of power was between us now, and that was going to scare him even more later on.

“What can I do about it now ... within reason? I still think you want my job ... control of the entire outfit!”

“Trust me, completely ... when I say that I don’t want your job. I’ve never wanted to become the Boss. Chances are, if I was the man, sitting back there behind that desk, I’d make more enemies than friends in the long run in both high and low places, and the neighborhood won’t likely ever improve a bit as a result. I think I’d rather work within the system, and within the current existing power structure, which includes your organization, Westside Jonny’s and perhaps even the Syndicate’s. I’m pretty certain that they don’t want any street wars for power or territory ... nor do you. Together, perhaps we can preserve that ... and really start improving the Westside, or at least make it truly less like hell.”

“You’ve changed, Chancer,” Connor observed while offering me one of his Havana cigars and lighting it. “You’ve always resembled your father, in his eyes and the way that he held his chin up against the world. Now you’re sounding just like him too ... he was always talking about cleaning up South Hell too. He wanted to identify and run-off all of the big absentee slumlords. Buy them out or just scare them all out, one at a time if need be. ‘Couldn’t be done’, my father always told him, that they were all too rich, too politically powerful and that they liked their peasants kept down groveling with their noses to the mud. That is what killed him ... I’m sure of it, and they can do it to you too. And me, as well. That will get us both killed!”