What were we doing?
It had to stop.
Feelings of need, longing, sadness. Mourning.
Anguished over Carmine, pulsing with need for Cap.
I was all manner of fucked up.
And I still had a man to kill.
* * *
I returned to the Private Garden late the next night. The parking lot was half filled and I rolled the Chevy to the far side. Settled in to wait.
Made no sense going inside. Clem wasn’t a stupid guy. Not that I recalled, anyway. He’d have bouncers inside. Probably a few other Balestra soldiers sitting around watching the strippers bounce their titties around. Going inside was stupid. It was suicide.
But Clem had to come out eventually. He couldn’t wait around indoors forever. He needed sleep. The comforts of home.
So I waited.
And I thought about Cap.
I deleted the pictures, like she asked. I was a gentleman that way. But every time I closed my eyes, I saw them like two ghostly emanations. Her hair, her skin, her breasts. Her collarbones and her arms. Every detail, smeared on my brain, burned into my mind. My cock was in a perpetual state of hardness, thinking about Cap’s body.
And those texts.
I want to see you.
She had no clue what that did to me. How bad it hurt.
I would’ve done anything she asked. But I couldn’t risk a meeting. Not yet, anyway. I was too close to Clem and I didn’t want anything to go wrong. Another name from my list. For Carmine. That was important.
It was like I had to hunt and kill to slay the demons of guilt. The closer I got to Cap, the more intense the need. If I could just avenge Carmine, then it might be okay, wanting to flirt with Cap, the girl he was supposed to marry. It might be all right if I kissed her and slipped my hand between her legs and listened to her breathe heavy in my ear. It might not matter if I took her, fucked her, made her sweat and beg.
But right now, it mattered. And I was a goddamn piece of shit.
So I waited. I posted up in the Chevy. Guys came and went. The club was open late. Strip clubs usually were. Guys came out, they drank, they watched girls. They didn’t want to go back to their shitty lives.
Inevitably, they had to. The flood of stumbling assholes started around two. They came out, trickling in ones, twos, threes. Cars left the lot. I moved the Chevy closer, trying not to stand out. More cars left, and more, and soon it was girls coming out. Strippers, dressed in their civilian clothes. Left their bras and thongs behind.
Then I saw him.
The doors opened and there he was. Clem the man himself.
He was tall. Beanpole skinny. Always had been. Wore big jeans and a baggy shirt. I didn’t know him well but I’d seen him around. I knew all the players back in the day. Clem was a minor guy. Gunman and soldier for Balestra back when Balestra was just a man with cartel connections. Clem was violent and dangerous, but he didn’t scare me. He wasn’t the type to scare me.
He came out flanked by girls. I noticed Shadow was one of them. Nice-looking girl. Wholesome, almost. The other was a blonde with bad skin and a nasty frown.
I waited for them to get into the mix of cars before I stepped out of the Chevy with my retractable baton gripped in my hand.
Clem didn’t see me at first. I came up slow, using the remaining cars as cover. He stood and talked with the girls. The blonde’s back was to me. She wore sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Hair up in a bun. Shadow faced my direction. Tan skin, big brown eyes. I remembered how she smelled, like body lotion and coconut oil.
She spotted me as I got within ten paces of Clem.
“Hey,” she said, mouth falling open. “It’s him.”
Clem turned. And I knew I was fucked.
It was the way she said, it’s him. She warned Clem. She did it even though I tried to tell her to stay clear. She told him someone asked around and he was ready.
His hand went to his waistband.
The problem with using a baton is guns. They fuck everything up. Hand to hand, I always win. Guns equal the playing field. Which was why I always hit fast and hard. Kill before guns get involved.
I had ten paces to go. Clem reached for his weapon. Which left me two choices.
First choice. Turn and run. Use the cars as cover. Get back to the Chevy and try again some other time.
Second choice. Charge in and hope I get lucky.
No time to think. I didn’t consider it. Didn’t bother weighing the options.
I sprinted forward, extending the baton.
Pain lanced along my side. The stitches in my wound pulled, but I didn’t feel anything snap. Nothing broke open. No blood. That was a good sign.