Shoot 'Em Up by Janey Mack

Author:Janey Mack [Mack, Janey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2016-07-26T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

A yellow Post-it waited on my desk chair at the Sentinel:

Pay up.

Sweet. Lennon had finished my research.

Twenty hours—because no way was Lennon the kind of guy who was going to finish early—at $60 an hour. I counted twelve hundreds from my wallet and put them in an envelope. Time to go see what he’d found out about the scourge of the Grieco cartel, The Weeping Beast. I was banking it’d be a good deal more than Nyx’s puppet, Wes.

I stowed my messenger bag in the file drawer, jammed the envelope in the back pocket of my jeans, and went to meet the human rake.

Lennon rocked behind his desk on a bright red yoga ball chair, typing. His shoulder blades poked painfully from his thin wool sweater. So scrawny, he could use ChapStick for deodorant.

I rapped on the open office door. “Got your note.”

Lennon jerked his head toward his old desk chair in the corner and kept typing.

Thanks, but I can do without my clothes reeking of vape.

I walked over to the small window. “Hi,” I said to Grey Gardens, who was wearing a mustard- and mud-colored tie-dyed outfit that a roadie for Phish would have rejected.

Grey Gardens wrinkled her nose as if I smelled far worse than the trash can filled to overflowing with fast food wrappers. “I’ll get us a Starbucks, ya?”

“Tall Caffè Misto with soy milk,” Lennon said still typing.

“Geez, I know, I know,” she fawned. “You have the same thing every day!”

If there was anything sadder than a chubby, middle-aged woman crushing on a snobbish hipster, I couldn’t think of it.

Grey Gardens wafted out on a cloud of Febreze, housecat, and White Diamonds perfume.

Lennon took his time before spinning around on the clown nose yoga chair. He held a manila folder tight to his thin chest and thrust out his palm. “Cash?”

Taking a Saf-T-Pop from a toddler would have been more challenging. I sucked in my lips, stifling a mouthful of snark, and handed him the envelope.

Awkwardly, he opened it with one hand and riffled the bills with his thumb. Satisfied, he wedged the envelope beneath his keyboard. “Now,” he said, “we’re going to get something straight.”

“Ooo-kay.”

“What are you planning to do with this research?”

“Not really your concern, is it?”

A shrewd, unpleasant look settled over his face. “What story exactly?”

“I don’t feel comfortable sharing that with you.”

“This report contains information you would never have been able to find, much less access and—”

Jaysus, let’s get this show on the road.

“Yes, thank you. Which is why”—I pointed at the keyboard—“payment for services rendered.”

His ears lit up like traffic flares. “I’m clarifying, for the record, that we had an agreement for research, not content. Background for a story? You use one sentence in its entirety, and I want co-writing credit.”

Seriously? “A little cart before the horse, don’t you think? You’re assuming what you’ve done is useful to me.” I held out my hand for the folder.

“It will be.” His concave chest puffed out almost all the way to normal human.

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