12 One Strange Date by Laurence Shames

Author:Laurence Shames [Shames, Laurence]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

21.

D own on Duval Street, in a noisy bacon-smelling place called Carmen’s Southernmost Café, two large men and a small one were having breakfast together. The two large men were discussing the relative merits of waffles and pancakes.

One of the large men, nicknamed Soup for his custom of breaking people’s jaws and knocking out their teeth and thereby putting them, if they survived at all, on liquid diets for long periods of time, was saying, “Wit’ waffles, here’s what I love. They got these little compartments, so you know exactly how much syrup to put on. The compartment fills up to the top, ya got the right amount. It’s like, whaddyacallit, automatic. Tidy.” As if to demonstrate, he pressed down the tab of the syrup dispenser with a thumb as thick as a salami and almost daintily drenched his waffle square by square.

His fellow-assassin Bats, whose specialty was smashing knees and skulls with a Louisville Slugger, was more of a pancake man. “Waffles,” he said, “that’s exactly the problem. Ya put stuff on ‘em. Pancakes, stuff comes in ‘em. Like these. Banana-Walnut. Stuff’s inside. Every bite’s different, a surprise, like fucking Christmas. Is there gonna be a crunch? Is there gonna be a smush? Way more interesting. Gimme pancakes any day.”

The third man, the small one, stayed out of the conversation and, instead, was looking at a newspaper. The paper hid him except for the top of his head, where his dull brown hair had thinned to a downy fuzz like the coating on the backside of a baby bird. Amid his companions’ clanking of utensils and slurping of coffee, he was broodingly silent until he suddenly snapped and folded back the paper so that it shrank down to a quarter of its size and was open to page three. He laid it on the table and said, “Finally a fucking break. Maybe at least.”

He pointed to a brief item halfway through the crime roundup, then sat back so his goombahs could read it. It took them quite a while. Soup ran a finger along the type and underlined words with a manicured nail. Bats’ lips twitched as he read. Finally Soup said, “White guy, five-eleven, athletic. Could be our guy. Won’t be too fucking athletic when we’re done with him.”

Bats said, “But what’s with the super-Waspy name, this Sanderson-something. Doesn’t go with the Russian accent.”

Bitterly, the small man said, “Fuck the Russian accent. The Russian accent was phony as shit. Can’t believe I fell for it.”

A quick and secret glance passed between the two large men. They weren’t in the least surprised that Marco had fallen for the accent or the come-on or the whole cockamamie scam. That was Marco; a fast reader but he lacked for common sense. In fairness, it can’t have been easy being Funzi Albertini’s favorite nephew, heir apparent to the most murderous crew in Queens, and kind of a weakling shrimp in terms of his own physique. Big shoes to fill, small feet to fill them with.

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