Chapter 10: Job Application

It didn’t take us too much longer to get to our destination, but I seethed, inwardly, for almost the entire rest of the trip. I realized, though, that I needed to get my head in the game, so to speak, as we were pulling up to the place. I frowned as we approached, thinking to myself, this is the place?

It was a home on a cul-de-sac, a single story rambler-style home— with a basement, I found out a little bit later— with a fenced in little front yard and a driveway big enough to just fit four vehicles, just the number already in the driveway anyway. There was space out front of the house for perhaps three or four more vehicles, and there was only one other, as we pulled in behind it on the street.

As Tony and I both got out of the car, the plan I’d loosely developed danced into the forefront of my thoughts again. Tweedle-dumb and tweedle-dumber coming to my door was likely the worst thing that could have happened to the fish-food twosome, and while it certainly wasn’t the highlight of my night, I had realized the potential for an opportunity from their stupidity.

My first thoughts had me considering going the mercenary route, hiring myself out to those willing to pay for someone of my potential skills and enough money to make it happen. I wasn’t completely opposed to doing that, but at the same time, there were certain lines I wouldn’t cross— though killing someone who needed it, while definitely not something I wanted to do, I most certainly would do if and when I felt it was needed— and I did have some morals; losing my heart— my wife— hadn’t completely killed the man in me. I might be becoming a bastard, but I wasn’t at the point of putting harm to innocent children or bystanders.

But I would have no compunctions about using my skills and abilities against folks who would. Those who had no problems with causing misery to others, without regard for who they shat upon, and especially if it was because doing so made them money- those folks, I could easily consider using them, helping them get rid of their competition, and then turning on them, too. Being bad for a good cause. Yeah, I could get down with that.

Convincing Tony to bring me into the clutches of his boss only took me collaring him like the neighborhood dog and making vague threats that weren’t at all the bluffing he thought they were. Letting him think that bringing me to his boss, would end up with him being free of my hold on him, and with me being at his mercy— or the mercy of his boss— or dead, was not too hard to accomplish. He probably thought that I wouldn’t leave the house alive. It would probably suck for him to find out differently, but I certainly wasn’t going to tell him. He’d find out for himself, anyway.

We walked up through the grass that wasn’t fenced in, up to the front door; Tony didn’t bother knocking, instead just pushing the door open lightly. “Got company,” he called out as he crossed the threshold, with me just a couple of steps behind.

The two ... well, when I was younger, the term “gang-banger” was coined for young boys like the two who seemed to stumble out of the shadows and greet the two of us at the door. Personally, I’d have named them “Frick-and-Frack”, simply because they were dressed and wore facial expressions of stereotypical ‘gang-bangers’. Both of them had weapons trained on me.

The one on the left of me— and Tony, though to be honest, Tony wasn’t in the line of fire— was a young black male; he was shorter than I was at about maybe 175 cm tall, if that much; he reminded me of a cross between Ray J and Tupac when he played Bishop in the movie “Juice” in his facial features, but he must have weighed somewhere close to a hundred and fifty or more kilos, and most of that probably wasn’t muscle. He was dressed in a designer sweat suit, and wearing a decently large gold chain around his neck and a ball cap on his head.

The one on the right of me was another young male, this one a hispanic male, and he also had me at gun-point; he was a little taller than his partner, maybe 180 cm tall, and a lot more skinny as well- if he weight in at half the weight of his partner, I’d be surprised. He was dressed even more stereotypically, wearing a ball cap of his own, a baseball jersey-style shirt, with only the top two buttons fastened, and a pair of slightly baggy jeans sat just below his hips and stayed there with a belt around his thighs, while his underwear could be pretty clearly seen, at least from the front. He looked a lot like a really young Benjamin Bratt with an ‘anchor’ style goatee.

The two of them looked me up and down, but the hispanic male stared a little harder at me, and then clicked off the safety on his gun.

“Yo,” he glared at me, like he was trying to stare a hole in my forehead, “hand over the piece.”

It took me a second to realize he was talking about the pellet gun stuck into the waist of my pants.

“This is a pellet gun,” I said to him, almost like I was talking to a seven year old. “And I’m not—”

“I don’t care what it is,” he interrupted me, “I said, hand it over.”

“And the answer is ‘no’,” I returned, full of bravado.

“Hand it over, or D-man and I will put a cap in you right here.”

“Shoot me, or touch me, and I’ll snap both of your necks before you think I’m supposed to die,” I growled back at him.

“It’s cool for now,” Tony jumped in, giving a little gesture that I happened to see was more than a little gesture, “he’s with me.”

“And what the fuck’s that around your neck, Tiny?” D-man snarled, his tone incredulous, his voice surprisingly high for a guy of his size.

Tony jerked his head back my way. “The reason why I’m taking him to Luis; he got the drop on me; maybe he might be worth something.”

“Hmph,” the ‘Bratt’ lookalike grunted, and gestured angrily for the two of us to pass, “should snatch you anyway.”

I gave him a look, one that expressed that I was not afraid of him in the slightest, and then turned away from him, contemptuously. Though I doubted that he easily got the silent disrespect I had for him.

Tony led me away from the incompetent twosome, through what would have normally been the dining room area; instead, there were a couple of other couches set up against either wall, and on one couch were a couple of young men, probably still in their late teens, playing a video game on the large screen television that hung on the wall over the other couch, where two other young men, and what appeared to be their lady friends, sitting and chatting, though everyone paused in what they were doing to watch Tony and myself as we crossed the room and entered the kitchen area. Tony took a turn and went through a doorway, where there were stairs leading down.

We ended up in a large, barely finished single room; in the room was sat a desk, two comfortable lounging chairs and one utilitarian office chair; the office chair was directly in front of the desk, with the lounging chairs sitting behind and flanking it. Other than those decorations, the room itself was pretty bare.