Losers Live Longer by Russell Atwood Page B

damned if you’ll have it.”
     
    I couldn’t really object. He opened the door and I said to his back, “I’m sorry, Matt. I know what he meant to you.”
     
    He didn’t turn round, but nodded his head couple times.
     
    “ Owl had a good run,” he said. “Did it his way all the way down the line. No one lives forever.”
     
    I grunted. “Control yourself. You’ll do yourself a mischief carrying on that way.”
     
    This time he turned around, and said evenly, “Fuck off, you fuckin’ fuck-off.”
     
    Matt was never one to be at a loss for words. It felt like old times.
     
    Only after he’d left and my office door shut did I realize I’d forgotten to congratulate him on becoming a father. And I still didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl.
     
    I switched the phone cord back to my receiver. As soon as I did, the phone started ringing. I picked up.
     
    “ Yellow.”
     
    “ Mr. Sherwood?”
     
    It was my client, Paul Windmann.
     
    “ Yep.”
     
    He said, “She called.”
     
    “ Who?” I was still thinking of Michael Cassidy and whatever she’d had to do with Owl.
     
    “ The woman who ripped me off. She wants to sell my stuff back to me.”
     
    “ That isn’t selling, it’s ransoming. Don’t pay.”
     
    “ I have already.”
     
    “ What, you saw her? When?”
     
    “ I haven’t seen her. I sent her a payment through PayPal.”
     
    “ Oh brave new world. How much?”
     
    “ That’s not your concern. What I’d like is for you to make the pick-up for me.”
     
    “ Sure thing,” I said, trying to sound cheerful about it. “You’re the boss. What’s the address?”
     
    “ Number 27, Avenue C,” he said. “Apartment three. Do you know where that is?”
     
    “ I think I can find it,” I said.
     
    I hung up the phone. I sat and thought a bit. Then I stood up and went to the kitchen area where my floor safe was located. I spun the combination, opened the door, and took out my gun.
     
    A 9mm Luger, a black automatic with a dull sheen, which looked like it was made of plastic until you picked it up and felt the heft and knew it was serious. In twelve years, I’d only carried it three times in the course of work, never fired it except on a firing range downtown, and only once had to show it to some asshole who didn’t believe I had it, hiking up to end a confrontation that was about to get ugly. But having a license to carry is a necessity of the job. Some clients expect it, others demand it.
     
    In this case, I had no idea what to expect, so I was going armed. I had a stiff leather side holster for the gun, but I’d misplaced it a few years back, so now I had to stick the gun down the back of my pants, just like in the movies. It meant that I had to wear a light jacket over it, even though the day was way too hot. I would have to take a cab. If I walked to 27 Avenue C with my jacket on, I’d be a sopping mess of perspiration by the time I got there.
     
    So I caught a cab. Back to Alphabet City, back to the apartment building on Avenue C, back to Mr. Andrew’s apartment, where Jeff and the diabla were now living.
     
    The gun dug into my lower back like someone was shoving it into me, prodding me forward against my will.
     
    I got out a block away and walked the rest. The street door was swung wide, propped open by a stack of telephone directories. The inner vestibule door was held open by another stack, so I didn’t have to ring a buzzer to gain entrance.
     
    I walked down the first floor corridor, a breeze against my face and bright daylight spilling out from beneath the stairwell.
     
    The light was from an open rear door into a back courtyard. I heard the sound of water spraying from a hose. I looked out and saw Luis, the forest-green-clad super, standing with his broad back to me, hose in his hand, the nozzle shooting a jet of water. He was rinsing out a plastic trash barrel lying on its side in an area of patchy grass and weeds, disjointed brick masonry, two