Fatal Justice (Jack Lamburt #1)(18)

And even though I’d bailed on that life, I kept my hand in the money jar via consulting work. Besides the easy cash, my second job of IT consulting for the government, while not as fun as my third job, had a ton of perks.

I could take on as many or as few assignments as I wanted. I could work from home. Evenings, weekends, sick days, middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep and ran out of Jack Daniels. Whenever I wanted.

But the single most important thing that kept me in the IT game, besides lightning-quick body fat percentages and STD checks on potential lovers, was that I had access to all the data that HFS paid me to protect. I knew everything. About everybody.

With that treasure trove of data just a few keystrokes away, I had my pick of the litter, the belle of the ball, to choose from when I got the itch to live out my childhood Batman fantasies. Thanks to Kalib and Flight 2262, I got that itch a lot. That was unfortunate for people like Fat Sam, because, and I’ll be the first to admit this, I didn’t handle my God complex very well…





18





I logged in to the HFS portal and within minutes I had Sam’s file open on the screen. I studied it for a while, and when I grew tired of reading what a pitiful waste of life he was, I decided to find the two stooges from last night.

They’d have to try and find Sam. I mean, it wasn’t like they could just drive home and tell everyone that Sam had disappeared into thin air. I chuckled out loud. London raised his head and looked at me like I had a tomato-sized tumor on the tip of my nose.

That would be perfect though. I could see them in my mind, hemming and hawin, doing a little two step in front of the big boss. “Er, ahh, uhm, sorry boss, we lost Big Sam. He just got up in the middle of the night and disappeared. Honest.”

Right. I’d give them two days before they were whacked in retaliation for killing Sam.

But since that wasn’t likely to happen, I figured the chances were good that the two hammerheads would reappear today at the last place Sam had been. The Red Barn. Where else could they start looking for him? I decided that I’d better learn a little bit about these jokers. Know-your-enemy type of thing.

Compared to Sam, their files were tiny. Fat Boy was married, lived in Staten Island, and was a low-level associate, as opposed to a “made man,” which was mobster lingo for a fully initiated member. The only reason he was in Summit this weekend was because two of Sam’s closest pals had recently enrolled in the witness protection program and were spending their days in warm and sunny Arizona, posing as a retired government employee and a florist. Seriously, can’t make this stuff up. A florist?

Skinny Guy was a mob associate, single, and lived in Long Island. He’d spent much of his life below the radar, so there wasn’t much background info on him other than a few arrests for some minor stuff.

Now I had to decide how to handle them. I’d opened up a can of worms with Sam’s well tossing, not that I’d had any choice in the matter. But how much would this fiasco spin out of control? If I did nothing, the two stooges were sure to do something bad for somebody. Not for me. Probably for Mary Sue. They were desperate, and desperate men were very dangerous.

If I took them out, something that I salivated over like the Big Bad Wolf did when he saw Little Red Riding Hood skipping through the woods all by herself, then we’d have even more visitors from their hood.

Unless… Hmm, yes, that’s it! I got it!





19





Less than halfway up the well, Sammy’s legs started to shake. Not from the cold, which was becoming a factor despite his body heat rising from the workload, but from the strain of keeping his lower back pressed against the rock wall hard enough to support his weight. His thigh muscles burned worse than he’d ever felt in his life.

He stopped and tried to lock his knees in place to support his weight, giving his legs a rest, but the well wasn’t wide enough for him to fully extend his legs. He tried another tack and placed his hands on top of his knees and pushed against them so that he could relax his legs. Ahh, that felt good.

It lasted about fifteen seconds before his triceps gave out, and he was back to using his leg muscles to support himself. Holy shit, that was freakin’ brutal. He extended his arms straight down, locked his elbows, and dug his palms into the rock wall next to his fat ass. He was able to take some of his weight off his legs that way.

He thought of Sally, and what a good and loyal wife she’d been throughout his rise in the business. Being the wife of a high-ranking mobster was difficult, and she had ulcers to show for it. Despite how it was portrayed in Hollywood, mobster life was anything but easy.

Sure, there were parties, and the work itself was easy. There was always lots of cash floating around. Mobsters were the ultimate “bad boys,” and there was no shortage of gold diggers ready to hop in the sack with him and suck some cash from him.

All mob wives knew that their husbands’ Friday nights with the boys were really Friday nights with their mistresses, but those whores didn’t really mean anything to him. Plus he could do things with his girlfriends that he’d never do to the mother of his child.

And then there was his daughter, Barbara. Daddy’s little girl, except that she was going off to college next year. Fuck, how time flew. She’d need him around to keep all those asshole boys from trying to jump her bones.