Stan sent Amber out. I adjusted the volume.

“Okay, Beggar. What brings you all the way up from Miami? What couldn’t be handled with a phone call? You wanted us to run down Rollo for you. We done it. What else?”

“How old are you, Stan?”

A pause.

“What the hell is this?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” said Beggar. “I have nothing but respect for what you’ve accomplished here. You’ve done a hell of a job. Nobody could have run Orlando like you. Especially in the old days. But this ain’t the old days anymore. Things change. It gets tougher and tougher to keep business at the level it used to be at.”

“The hell you say.” Stan. “I run a tight ship. You got complaints? Let’s hear them.”

“This isn’t just me saying this, Stan. It’s come straight down the chain. You’re sitting on a big fat apple here in Orlando. Hotels, bars, Disney sitting over there like a big, ripe plum. Every hotel should be using the laundry service you tell them to. Every bar should be on to your beverage service. You’ve maintained well here, Stan, but the town’s expanded these last ten years. You haven’t. It’s a juicy territory, and you’re not squeezing hard enough.”

Stan made a disgusted noise in his throat. “And who can squeeze harder? You, I suppose.”

“I suppose I could.”

“So I’m out with the bathwater, am I?”

“It’s not like that. Nobody wants to put you out to pasture. Just let me move some of my people up here, show you how to shake a few more leaves off the money tree.”

“Bullshit. You think I don’t know the slow squeeze when I see it.”

“I told you,” said Beggar. “Nobody wants to squeeze you out.” He lowered his voice. “But it can get tough if you want to play it tough.”

Stan muttered something I couldn’t catch. “Okay. What am I supposed to do?”

“Good,” said Beggar. “You’re doing the right thing. First we need a favor.”

“What?”

“There’s a guy up here. In your town. Took some stuff that ain’t his. I need you to go over and make him unhappy.”

“Seems like all your problems run up here to Orlando.”

“Can I count on you or not?” asked Beggar.

“Why me?”

“He’s meeting one of your boys. Donovan.”

“Small time. Owns a titty bar. A nobody. So what?”

“We know he’s nobody,” said Beggar. “That’s why we figured you wouldn’t mind giving him up.”

Stan sighed heavy and ragged, the sound of his soul being pulled up though his throat, the sound of our world changing forever.

Stan had watched everyone go, watched Beggar glide out like the angel of doom back to his ivory tower. I told Lou to lock up then take a hike. Stan’s driver-bodyguard waited in Stan’s Fleetwood, so it was just me and him sitting around the Monopoly table in the monkey cage.

“Get a bottle,” he said.

“Of what?”

“Whatever. Bring two glasses.”

I fetched a bottle of Chivas, straddled my chair backwards. I leaned forward, filled each glass a third full.

He sipped. I sipped. We sat.

Finally he said, “You heard all that?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you size it up? The situation.”

“They’re handing you a big shit sandwich,” I said.

Stan nodded. Smiled. Not a happy smile. A might-as-well-get-used-to-taking-it-up-the-ass smile. “You have a good way with words, Charlie. Charlie the Hook. Anybody still call you that?”

“Hardly anybody.”

He scratched his head. “How’d you get that nickname? Been so long, I forgot.”

“I killed a man with a boat hook once.”

He chuckled. “Oh yeah.” He’d been forgetting a lot lately.

He finished the Chivas, coughed a little. “I don’t really drink anymore. Eighty-one years old. Believe that shit? All I’ve lived through, and it’s drinking and smoking and cholesterol and shit I have to worry about. Fuck.”

Yeah.

“But tonight-” He tapped his glass. I poured it a third full again. “- tonight I need a drink.”

“Sure, Stan.”

He drank. I drank. We still sat.

I cleared my throat some, kind of looked at him.

“Go ahead and ask,” he said.

“What do we do?”

“Right now we do nothing. We toe the line. You know Kyle Donovan?”

Not personally, but I’d been listening on the wire. “Owns a titty bar called Toppers on Orange Blossom Trail. He answers to you?”

“He’s pretty far down the food chain,” said Stan. “He answers to people who pay me for the honor of doing business in my neighborhood.”

“Who do you want me to take along?”

“Who do you need?”

I only thought a second. “Bob and Benny to cover the doors. I’ll go in myself after hours. I’ll leave New Guy to watch out for things here.”

“New Guy? Who the fuck’s that?”

“Lou Morgan. The huge guy. Muscles.”

“Don’t worry about that. I want you to call Benny and Bob. I want you taking care of this tonight before Beggar heads back for Miami.”

“Tonight?”

“What’s that? Some kind of problem?”

“No problem, Stan.”

“Good. Nobody gets out. Got it? If it moves, it’s dead.”

“I got it.”

“Now listen, Charlie. This is the important part. There’s a black, eel-skin briefcase with the initials A. A. Combination locked. Grab it. Turn the place inside out if you have to but put the snatch on it top priority, capiche? Beggar wants the case taken to Alan Jeffers.”

Stan explained Jeffers was the twitchy coke-head that worked for Beggar. Beggar’s blond gunman was a cat named Lloyd Mercury.

I said, “I understand. What’s in the case?”

“What the fuck you care what’s in the case? Just get it.”

“Okay, Stan.”

“Shit, what a fucking night. Look, forget I snapped. I’m a cranky old man, right?”

“No problem, Stan.”

“I got to go. I’m trusting you to take care of this.”

We said our goodbyes. From the window I watched him bend his old-man body into the Fleetwood.

As I was dialing Benny’s number, I thought that Stan still hadn’t asked where Blade Sanchez had vanished to. Maybe he had a reason for not asking. When you asked questions, you risked getting answers.

Benny answered after four rings. “Yeah?” He didn’t sound sleepy. Night owl.

“Put your fun hat on,” I told him. “We got work.”

At a quarter to five, me and Benny and Bob waited in a black mini-van in the Toppers parking lot. The girls had left in a steady stream, not quite as appealing out of their g-strings and in their street clothes. When the lot was empty, I told my team to check the loads on their shotguns. The plan: I go in and sweep the place clean. They wait by the exits and plug anyone who tries to bolt.

“You sure about this, Charlie?” Benny chewed his fingernails. All of his jittery habits surfaced when it was go time. But he had his head on straight. No problem.

“Our best guess is there’s about nine guys in there,” he said. “We’ll know better when you talk to the girl.”

“Yeah, but the breakdown’s okay. We got one bookworm counting the night’s take, two bartenders, and two bouncers who may or may not be packing. That leaves four probably carrying heat, and I take them first.”

“Look, I got plenty of faith in you,” said Benny. “But maybe I should come with, huh?”

“I got it. You cover the rear.”

“Okay.” Benny handed me an envelope. “Her name’s Candy.”

“Sure it is.”

I leaned against the back wall between the rear entrance and the Dumpster. Two minutes later, a ragged blond with big fake tits emerged and held the back door open for me.

“How many?” I asked.

“Nine,” she said and snapped her gum. “The four suits all have guns. I sat in Myron’s lap earlier, so I know he ain’t packing.”

“Myron?”

“Donovan’s cousin from down south.”

My ears perked up. “How far down south?”

“Miami, I think. What do I know? He had busy hands and wasn’t much interested in talking.”

“Okay. Who else?”