Mallicks: Back to the Beginning (Mallick Brothers 5)

"I can't work for you," I admitted. "Got involved with the Russians in the city once. Don't think your connections would take kindly to you hiring me."

"Fair enough. But I hate to see good men out of jobs, so maybe I can just do you a favor, and point you to Allberry. Lots of organizations up there looking for work. Plus, you get to spend a lot more time by the beach. Can't bitch about that."

And I couldn't.

Without any other leads, that was where I headed, sleeping in cheap motels with truckers and whores as neighbors while I tried to get an ear to the ground, figure out who the players were, where I might fit in.

There were low-level street gangs, as there always were, but they did their own enforcing, these men who operated on their cred alone.

I didn't want to work for someone like that anyway.

I wanted to work for someone more established, someone who operated on their reputations and respect.

I wanted a chance to really dig in, get some roots, stop having to jump from one job to the next, from one place to the next.

Enter Christopher Eames.

It was a name that made you picture a cop, or a paper pusher at some office somewhere, not the area's biggest cocaine dealer with an empire that had been established two decades before.

That sounded like some much-needed stability.

I got my name out there, got my face out there. Followed some of his men looking for a chance to step in, to help them in some way.

I found it early that summer, seeing the local street gang trying to jump one of Eames's guys.

In turn, I got a meeting.

So I pulled the zipper on the garment bag holding my best suit from the Russians. I shaved the face I had allowed to go to a beard while working the docks in some half-hearted attempt to keep my face from getting whipped by the cold air in the winter. I slipped on a watch I had pulled off a wrist of someone as repayment to my boss who ran the gambling ring that he had allowed me to keep as a bonus.

And I got in my car and drove to the address.

His home address as it would turn out.

I parked on the street, knowing my car was prone to leaking some fluid or another, and not wanting to piss him off by marking his driveway.

The house was a massive thing, three stories of a cool gray stucco to fend off the aggressive salt air of the beach it was situated directly across the street from.

The grounds were perfectly manicured, the shrubbery shaped and pruned so that not a single branch was out of place. The grass itself could put a fucking golf course to shame.

A guard stood outside the front door in a black suit even in the sweltering heat, leaning back against the wall, looking as bored as he must have been to be shackled with such a useless job.

"Mallick?" he asked, running his eyes up from my shoes to the top of my head, and it was impossible to tell whether or not he found me wanting.

"Charlie," I agreed, wondering as I often did when meeting a new boss if that sounded like a five-year-old's name. But Charles was my grandfather. Chaz was my father. Charlie was what was left for me.

"One minute," he demanded, ducking inside, coming back barely fifteen seconds later with someone else, someone around my age with dark hair, a tall though somewhat lanky frame, and green eyes in his sculpted face. Green eyes that had something dark within them. Having worked with criminals of all sorts the past few years, I was able to tell right off who was just in it for the money, and who was in it for the pleasure they got from it.

Everything within me was telling me that this man was in it because he got off on it.

"Charlie Mallick, this is Michael Eames. The boss's son."

"And right-hand man," Michael reminded the man in a tone that said he would likely pay for that introduction at some later time.

I shot the man a look of pity as Michael held a hand out, leading me into the foyer.

And it was a foyer.

Most spaces inside the front door could be called nothing other than an entryway. This was not that.

The space was as wide as a typical master bedroom with oversized entryways on either side, one to the dining room, the other a formal living room. A staircase wide enough to belong in a high school hugged one wall, white backs with black tops, curving up at the top in a half circle before - presumably - leading off to the bedrooms. The walls were the same cool stucco from outside, covered in places with pieces of artwork I knew - without knowing anything about such things - were originals. A long, dark table was pushed up under a gilded mirror, a very slight chip taken out of a corner, a strange, tiny defect that I couldn't seem to look away from until Michael cleared his throat.