The Lion Tamer (Completed)

Chapter Eight - Seeing John

Chapter 8

Leo drove the route back into the city and from the distance it looked like a dully lit tomb to him. A yellow and orange glow threw itself upwards to the ceiling of gray clouds, making the entire image apocalyptic, as if the city itself was on fire. Light, hard flakes began to fall and softly rattle off the windshield.
The only words during the whole ride back were spoken by Leo.
“I have to think. I’m not sure how bad this is gonna get but I figure that we got a better chance facing John than we do running from him. You guys lay low - real low - for a while until you hear from me…or about me.”
No one answered. Danny muttered that he was getting out as soon as they hit the city limits. When they dropped him off in a small neighborhood with well cared for lawns and clean street signs he quickly pulled his collar to his chin and headed in the opposite direction, then ducked between two buildings and vanished.
Leo’s lips moved in silent damnation of him as he watched him float away in the rear view mirror.
Twenty minutes later Tommy asked to be let out. He exited and buttoned his coat tightly before walking around to Leo’s side of the car and motioning for him to roll down the window.
“So, we’ll hear from ya?” Tommy asked, squinting into the growing snowfall that looked like hot ash under the street lights. Leo nodded and tipped his head back and forth slightly. Tommy put out a gloved hand and Leo took it.
Leo knew that Tommy wouldn’t move until he pulled away. Security and all, he thought, I can’t give him up if I don’t know where he went. He rolled the window back up and pulled away, watching Tommy’s body slowly become part of the hazy snow behind them.
A short while later Leo pulled the car through a darkened alley and onto a small side street. The neighborhood had become menacing looking, bleak and empty but with the promise of sharp-edged pain. Blackened buildings with broken glass and worn curtains surrounded them as the car moved onward. A few isolated and beaten apartment buildings, squat and buzzing with struggling neon signs in them gave way to the large corpses of brick factories and long quiet smoke stacks, making them appear as specter-like ships from old. He turned the car down a small street which divided two of the monstrous buildings and turned the headlights off, letting the car coast to a stop.
The two men got out and Leo walked behind to the trunk and opened it. He kept the trunk of his car always stocked with an emergency survival kit, a trick he learned a few years ago. All John Pronti’s men carried a quick stash of sodas, food, blankets or sleeping bags in their trunks just in case they had to go away for a while without being noticed. It made it easier than having to run to get supplies and it was only intended to get you through a night or two at best. Leo had added the luxury of a portable electric heater during the winter months. He removed the heater, an extension cord, a canvas satchel and handed two rolled up sleeping bags to Eddie before closing it again.
Eddie followed his brother alongside the wall until they reached a corner which was gated. Beyond the twisted and beaten metal was the entrance, black windows on either side, gray stairs below. Leo handed the heater to Eddie and squeezed his way through the gate.
“Wait here,” he said when he made it through to the other side. He jogged up to the stairs and into the shadowed doorway. Eddie looked nervously around him, at the glassless holes in the building, waiting for Evan’s head to appear, smiling and grinning curls of smoke from the corners of his mouth. He shuddered and turned away.
A distant creaking and then the moaning of old metal made him turn to see a black and beaten door opening on the side of the building. Leo slid his head out and motioned him over with one gloved hand.
The two men ascended dark and dusty stairs, creating huge plumes of warm breath with each step. Both were quiet now and they halted at the top landing, regaining air into their lungs. A closed door sat in front of them and beyond, as the slight huffing sound of their breathing quieted, they heard two voices on the other side of the wooden door. Leo removed a silver pistol from his coat pocket and put a hand up to get his brother’s attention. Eddie looked at him and nodded slowly.
Leo turned the handle and leaned into the door, it gave quite easily.
Two men were huddled close together, both sitting on either side of a metal bin that gave life to the orange-yellow glow of a small fire. They both wore fingerless wool gloves and were warming them near the flames when they turned to see the door open.
“Aw, shit!” one of them said and made a quick movement towards the corner of the room where an aluminum bat rested. The other stood frozen for a moment and looked around quickly, as if for an exit. He then bolted for a door behind him and slammed it shut behind.
“Yo! Don’t bother,” Leo said as the first man, dressed in a tattered long brown overcoat, sweatpants and a hooded sweater reached the bat. He let his hand rest on it and turned to the two men. He watched as Leo and Eddie walked towards him, Leo keeping the muzzle of the pistol trained on him.
“The fuck you guys want? You gonna roll me, a sorry shit like me? You gonna roll me, man? Awww, shit!”
Leo shook his head. “No. No, man, we ain’t gonna roll you. We need to stay here and you’re in my spot.”
The man looked around him and then back again. He looked to be in his early sixties or so, curly gray strands of hair nestled in his short beard. His face shone brightly at first, but now it seemed less so, muting itself against the glow of the fire until it appeared soft and warm. His eyes were bright and Leo could tell that there was a brain behind them. In the chest pocket of his coat was a pair of black frame glasses. He put them on.
“Well, I don’t see no names written anywhere here, y’know?” His eyes fell onto the chrome sparkle of the barrel of the gun and he paused. “But I gotta respect your writing implement there. Guess you can write your name wherever you want with that, huh?”
He looked to Eddie and his eyes went a little larger and he let his upper body arch back a bit, as if to take in the size of the man. He smiled uneasily.
“S’pose you won’t begrudge an old man to be allowed to take his food before he leaves, now, right?” He walked back and picked up a rolled bag of brown paper and shoved it in his pocket.
“You don’t have to go,” Leo said.
The man paused, then turned. He cocked his head quizzically and slitted his eyes. “Rules are, big dog gets the house, little dogs go outside, and” he said, tilting his head in Eddie’s direction, “they don’t come much bigger than him.”
“Well, you were here first,” Leo said. “I just use it…”
The man put up both hands. “I don’t need to know what you use it for, and I don’t want to know, dig?”
Leo put the gun back into his pocket and took one of the bags from Eddie and tossed it to the old man. He dropped the brown sack he had and deftly grasped the one offered him. He still looked at Leo with narrowed eyes.
Eddie said, “Leo, I’m hungry.”
Leo raised his hand again to quiet him and watched as the old man opened the bag and pulled out a wrapped hunk of cheese and a bottle of soda. He placed them on the concrete floor and pulled out a package of beef jerky and some Twizzlers.
Leo emptied the other bag and sat down on the floor and the old man joined him. Eddie sat down as well. The other bag that Eddie carried provided potato chips and pretzels and more candy and some water and Eddie lined up the assortment in front of him.
“Now you’re talkin’,” said the man with a smile and opened up the bag of pretzels. As they ate, Leo told him that they had a portable heater and told Eddie to go bring it over.
The man finally spoke again after he had placed a few pretzel sticks in one hand and rolled the bag back up, making noises like a crackling fire. “Sorry son of a bitch that ran outta here, huh? Doesn’t know what he missed,” he said.
Leo slid himself a few inches closer to the heater, which ran from a long cord to an outlet in the room behind the door. “You should always wait to see what’s up before you make any quick moves, hey? Never know what’s gonna end up on your doorstep, might be good.”
“Not around here, brother. Waiting around too long is a good way to get yourself killed or the shit kicked outta you.” He scratched his chin and smiled a bit as his eyes traced the path of the orange electrical wire that powered the small heater. He shook his head.
“I must have been here a hundred times but I never thought to see if there was any electric running through here. Guess you never know, like you said.” He reached for the bag of chips and Eddie handed it to him. “Still, not like I got anything that needs a plug.”
Leo finished filling himself with snacks and rolled up into his sleeping bag, turning his back to the warmth of the heater. Eddie sat cross-legged and pulled a comic book from his coat pocket and the old man slid closer to him.
“Whatchu readin’?” he asked.
Eddie looked at him and then allowed a faint look of doubt color his face. He had already gotten yelled at once for his comics by Leo and, now that they were in more trouble, he didn’t want to let him hear him talk about it. He stole a quick glance over at his brother and he heard deep breathing.
“Spiderman,” he whispered.
“Oh, I used to love Spiderman,” the old man whispered back, catching on that Eddie wanted to keep the volume down. “I always thought, though, that he needed a sidekick, ya know? He always had to do everything on his own. No help, ya know? Even Batman had Robin, am I right?”
Eddie looked at the old man’s face and warily smiled.
“No way,” he said.
“No way?” the man said. You telling me that if he had a sidekick, someone to give him a hand every now and then, it wouldn’t help him?”
“He doesn’t need one, see? He can just spin his webs and catch all the bad guys on his own. He never needed help. I never liked Robin anyhow.”
“Everyone needs help, my man,” the old man answered.
They talked in hushed voices for a while until the old man got tired and rolled close to the heater and Eddie covered him with his coat and climbed into his own sleeping bag.
The next morning Leo woke early, the light of a blue morning streaming in through the open windows and a chill ran through him as he pulled himself out of the sleeping bag. Eddie was curled into his own bag still, his eyes closed and mouth open and the old man was gone. Images of a broken dream still lingered in his mind but he couldn’t piece them into any sort of cohesive order: faucets that leaked echoing droplets of water, so loud it hurt his ears, their mother sitting in the kitchen, smoke curling from a bong on the table and her giggling through her vein shot hands…
He cleared his throat and tasted the piercing flavor of old smoke from the night before. He rummaged through one of the paper bags and found a few swallows of coke and drained it. After getting wrapped up in his coat again he leaned in toward Eddie and shook him gently. Eddie’s large brown eyes shot open wide and then softened after he had looked around the room a bit.
“What’s that sound?” he asked.
“Pigeons,” Leo answered.
Eddie sat up and looked to where the old man had fallen asleep.
“Hey, where did the old man go? He had my coat.”
“And he probably still does, my man.”
Eddie’s shoulders slumped a bit and he cracked his neck with a snap motion of his head. “Oh, well, he probably needed it more than I did anyway, huh?”
Leo smiled and nodded but it vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared.
“I’m gonna go see John, okay? I want you to stay here, can you do that?”
Eddie chewed a piece of his lower lip and his eyes grew a bit. He looked a few times to the floor and then to one of the open windows before answering.
“Okay,” he said. “What do I do if someone comes here?”
“No one is gonna come, okay? The only ones who know we’re here is that old man that took your coat and the guy that ran from us last night, remember him?”
He quietly nodded.
“There still some food left, so eat it if you’re hungry, but don’t leave this building, got it? I’ll be back in an hour or so and I’ll let you know what happens.”
“Are we in a lot of trouble Leo?”
“Yup, we are,” he answered. No sense in playing footsy here. We are in deep shit and I’m only hoping that I can convince John to not blow my fucking brains out right in his office.
He left Eddie sitting on the floor and drove through the city into his old neighborhood. He hesitated when he arrived at the Six Shooter because of all the cars parked out in front. Usually, it was quiet this early in the morning and finding a spot in front of John’s was easy, but there were a half dozen cars pulled up to the curb and the lights were on inside, although it still had the CLOSED sign hung in the glass front door.
Leo took a few breaths and sat in the car before he was able to guild the nerve to step out and walk to the club. He went unarmed and both hands out of his pockets. He rapped on the glass door a few times before a face appeared, someone Leo faintly recognized. The man had fleshy cheeks with small dark eyes and greasy hair slicked back into a short tail. He wore a large gray sweatshirt with Hankson’s Hardware printed on it. He blinked his eyes a couple of times before unlocking the door and swinging it open. He said nothing but Leo nodded and headed into the dark club. The chairs still slept on the tops of the tables that ringed the dance floor and he walked over to the bar. A small gathering of men that Leo did not recognize sat at one table in the corner. They stopped talking and watched him without moving.
The young, handsome bartender sat smoking a cigarette while he wiped off the top shelf bottles behind the bar and took no notice until Leo walked behind the bar and knocked on the door. He nodded and went back to his job. A second later the door opened.
Leo realized his worse scenario immediately as the first face greeted him. It was the white, grinning mask of DropDead. Leo could take credit for at least having caught him somewhat off guard but DropDead quickly recovered and let a wide smile grow. His teeth were perfect, too perfect and Leo thought he could see every one of them. DropDead was the one face he didn’t want to see this morning. He moved out of the way and let Leo enter.
Inside John’s office was four men and they took up much of the space in the tiny room. John sat, already in a crisp blue suit, behind the desk and he had two phones close by. He had just place one of the receivers down and looked up. His expression of disgust didn’t slide off of him for a moment.
An empty seat waited across the desk from John. Leo unbuttoned his coat and sat down. John lit a cigarette while he waited. His face was drawn a bit and Leo couldn’t tell if it was because of concern, anger or lack of sleep, maybe a bit of all three.
“You’re lucky you didn’t run,” John said as he expelled a breath of smoke. It floated towards Leo’s face and clouded his view for a moment, but he made no move to wave it away.
“I knew better than that. You’d find me. I needed time to think, though.”
John nodded and dragged on the cigarette once more. Leo didn’t know John for being much of a smoker, in fact he couldn’t clearly remember ever seeing him with one before. He had a penchant for pistachios and the bowl on his desk where they usually could be found was filled with broken shells.
“That’s right, Leo, we would have. You got that right. Leastways, we would have had DropDead here find ya, right?”
Leo kept silent and waited, but he could feel DropDead’s sick smile playing on him from behind, that bright, not-quite-there, elevator doesn’t go to the top floor smile.
“Hell, he managed to find your buddies before the sun even came up. Did you know that, Leo?” John looked at him through the smoke hanging in the stagnant air and he put his elbows on the desk and slid a bit forward. “They told us everything, everything.”
Leo managed to keep his expression still, but he couldn’t be sure that a whisper of a moan didn’t escape him.
John stubbed out the half-smoked butt and stood up. He looked briefly at the men around him and waved his hand casually. “Everybody get the fuck out.”
He waited as one by one the men filed out through the door that led back to the club. Leo could hear music being played now in that room, pulsing and loud. The thought came to him that it might be used to cover the sound of his brains being blown out. He noticed that DropDead remained in the room, now sitting on a low bookcase against a wall.
John waited until the door closed, then he looked at Leo. “That one guy of yours, the quiet guy, what was his name again?”
Was? Leo thought
He slowly walked around the desk until he was at the corner and placed his hand back down to rest. A beautiful but gaudy gold ring decorated his middle finger, a large thick band of gold with raised symbols. Leo sat and stared at the ring until he was finally able to pull his eyes away and face John.
Holy shit, this is where I am going to die, he thought.
“Danny…Danny Saltico,” he answered softly.
“He sang like fuckin’ Sinatra, you know. Ten minutes with DropDead and he’s telling us everything. You’re dumb fuck brother and how you left him alone with the kid…the stoned girl…Tommy taking the drugs…everything, you know? And you know what, Leo? It sounds to me like you really fucked this up.”
Great, the bastard never says a word and now he dimes me, Leo thought.
Leo felt panic rising in him, like warm, yellow bile growing in his belly and searching its way north towards his throat and mouth. His forehead suddenly felt cool as perspiration broke out under his arms and on his back.
“That boy was a very important screw up. He was definitely a screw up, but he was a very important one. Now I have all sorts of people asking all sorts of fuckin’ questions that I don’t want to have to answer. The girl, she’s with the cops now and our people down there are telling us that she’s saying she got raped. That got Quiet Danny in whole heaps of shit. I just took the leash off of DropDead when I found out about that, you know?”
Leo tried to talk, but his voice croaked and he cleared it.
John put his hand up. “That’s about all I want to hear from you ever again. Shut up or I swear I’ll put a bullet in your fuckin’ head myself right now.” Leo noticed his hands shaking and the loose skin on his face and neck trembling as his voice climbed. He stopped abruptly and slowed his breathing, the muscles in his cheeks tight and his eyes stabbing wide.
“I warned you about that Goddamn brother of yours, asshole. Now, because of him, and you,” he shouted again. “We’ve got a fucking crisis on our hands!”
He strode the few steps to Leo and grabbed him by both shoulders and pulled him up. He was a surprisingly strong man for someone who looked so frail but, then again, part of John Pronti was always deceptive. Leo could have resisted the attempt easily but he knew better and allowed himself be lifted to his feet. John delivered a series of slaps across his face, the large ring striking hard against his cheek and chin. The blows were not well placed and seemed to have been born of fury and exhaustion. A tight whining sound came from him as he landed each hit and to Leo it sounded as if he might start crying. He finally pushed him back toward the chair and Leo collapsed into it. John wiped a shining spot of saliva from his lip. He walked back over to his leather chair behind the desk and sat down.
“Leo,” John said with his voice slightly steadier. “We have got a shit storm on our hands now and someone has to pay. The people who this matters to want to see us clean house. They want to know that this has been taken care of. Christ, they practically want to see heads on walls.” John motioned as if to light another cigarette and picked up the bent pack. He looked at it and grimaced, opened his desk drawer and threw the pack inside.
“You’re men are gone now and I think you know that already. Tommy won’t be around anymore and Danny won’t either. I still have a dilemma, though, and it has to do with you.”
Leo thought, Well, I was hoping I might still make it out of here alive.
“You’re brother has to go,” John said in a straightforward tone.
Leo turned his head slightly as if he didn’t understand but he remained quiet. John stared at him and folded his hands on the desk.
“John, I…” Leo ventured saying and, getting no immediate response other than the locked eyes of his boss, continued. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.”
“Yes, you do, Leo. Yes, you do.” He kept his hands folded and his entire body seemed to fall back into place. The tension in his face had gone and the blood had begun to flow back into his hands and knuckles, gradually erasing the whiteness there. He loosened the knot of his tie and motioned to toward DropDead with an empty coffee mug who silently came over and took it from his hand. Leo heard the door open behind him again. The pounding music returned until the latch of the door found home.
John continued.
“I’m not gonna ask you about this, I’m just gonna tell you what’s going to happen. I could just as easily put a bullet in your brain right now for the fucked up job you dropped on my desk. I told you two years ago that your retarded brother better not become a liability and he has. We have to make it good to the big people and, out of respect for your mother, I’m not gonna have both of you killed, but I would be perfectly justified if I did.” He sat back in his chair and it creaked softly. “I don’t care how you do it, but you better do it and you better do it quick.”
“Me?” Leo asked, his voice unable to mask the uncertainty.
The door opened up again and DropDead circled behind the desk with a steaming cup of coffee. He placed it on the desk and moved to the wall behind John and leaned his shoulder against it. He kept his light blue eyes fixed on him and a smirk played subtly beneath.
“Yes, you,” John answered.
“But,” he paused, looking at DropDead for a moment. He hated looking this helpless in front of him. “But, why? I mean, John, Eddie doesn’t even know enough to…”
John leaned forward, and pulled open the top drawer of his desk. He reached in and lifted a black pistol and pointed it at Leo. Leo felt his muscles lock for a second, preventing him from ducking but it was enough to cause him to flinch slightly.
“Then I’ll kill you right here.” John’s hand wasn’t shaking now, it was as if a calm blanket had covered him and was keeping him warm. He had a confidence in his eyes and kept the barrel leveled at Leo’s forehead.
DropDead was snickering to himself while he watched the whole scene. He pulled a stick of gum from his pocket, unwrapped it and placed it on his tongue. His straight teeth looked like white knives to Leo right now.
“Told ya not to take the fuckin’ ape with you,” he said.
Leo blinked and nodded. John lowered the gun and put it on the desk.
“Everyone has to pay, Leo.”
“Why me, though?”
“Consider that your way of paying for such a big fuck up. Then I never want to see you fuckin’ face in here again. I want Eddie dead by the end of the week or you take his place, got it?”
Leo reached up and touched his cheek and felt the raised skin and the line of the cut that John had left there. He raised himself from the chair on slightly shaky arms and rebuttoned his coat. He threw a glare back to DropDead who only smiled in return. He turned and opened the door behind him and walked across the dark dance floor to the door that led outside.