Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
Here Where we left off in Part 168 …“It’s nothing for you to worry about,” Lois reassured the groom, shaking his hand when Clark stepped away. “Cat was merely joking about my former beau who has trouble letting go. Speaking of which, Cat I must thank you for the loan of the dress. It’s perfect.”
Clark had to agree. Luthor’s brainless goons would never recognize her. They probably hadn’t even looked at her face when she walked by.
“Well, when you called about crashing my wedding, I couldn’t resist,” Cat replied, wrapping her arm more tightly around Phil’s other arm. “This is my husband Phil.”
Phil was still staring at his wife. “You wore that dress?”
“Once upon a time before I stopped wearing such skintight clothing, yes, but it’s much shorter on me,” Cat replied, her eyes sparkling with mischief. Clark didn’t need to read minds to know either of their thoughts.
“I’m glad to finally meet you, Phil,” Lois said, interrupting the moment. “I knew you had to be something special the way Cat’s been mooning over you since February.”
“Mooning?” Phil asked his bride with delight.
“Well… that’s not entirely…” Cat sputtered with a glare at Lois.
“‘Oh, Clark’,” Clark said in a high pitched, yet pouting tone of voice. “‘I can’t stop thinking about Phil. He was A-MAZ-ING! After him, no other man will do. If you can fall in love at first glance, why can’t I?’ Yep. Totally over the moon.” He grinned and deftly avoided Cat’s slap to his shoulder.
“Awww, Sweetums,” Phil said, his misty eyes turning towards his wife. “That’s the most… the kindest…” He pulled her into an embrace.
Cat pointed over her husband’s shoulder at her Man of Honor. “I’ll get you for that, Kent!” she called, before her lips disappeared under Phil’s.
“Clark!” Lois said sharply as they returned to their previous slow dance position as the lights once more dimmed.
“Hey, she started it,” Clark defended himself.
“Love at first glance, huh?” Lois said.
“Oh, that,” he murmured without embarrassment, lowering his lips to hers. “I’ve always been partial to trashy blondes with no fashion sense.”
Lois nudged his shoulder with her elbow as she pulled him closer, mumbling something about May, the sun, and how the two should never meet. Frankly, asking her to repeat what she said wasn’t as important as how she said it. With her fingers running through his hair and her practically bare chest pressed against his, he decided words were overrated.
***
Part 169Later that same night… Jack had staked out Kent’s Clinton Street apartment over the past several days, hoping to catch a break to talk to the man. Since Mrs. Cox had pulled the plug on the Daily Planet, Kent and his buddies had been keeping some strange hours. It was getting closer to Lois’s wedding date with Luthor and, though Jack hated to admit he cared, nobody deserved that fate. Honestly, Jack was amazed that she had survived this long.
Kent’s roommate, that bratty guy who accused Jack of stealing his lunchbox, had gone out whistling a half-hour before, jumped on his motorcycle, and headed off for a night at the clubs. Jack might never have been so lucky, but he recognized a man spruced up for his chances with the ladies when he saw one.
Jack hadn’t seen Kent all evening and figured he must have left before Jack arrived. It had been just about dusk, when Jack staked out his spot half a block away and squared in the shadows behind an empty cement planter with a perfect view of Kent’s Clinton street building. Per his norm, Kent usually went out during dinnertime, only to arrive home for a few hours before heading out again later in the evening. Catching the man at home without the guy who claimed Jack had his lunchbox seemed to be a near impossibility.
If Kent were as good a guy as Bobby said he was, he would know what to do to with the knowledge of Mrs. Cox’s visit to the Daily Planet the morning the building had exploded. Jack might only be a street kid, but he was smart enough to connect dots.
Hearing a swoosh of wind, Jack glanced upwards toward the noise, wondering what it was. He wondered if a news or police helicopter or a medevac copter had flown past, although he didn’t hear the familiar thump, thump, thump of the blades. He didn’t see anything other than a momentary and strange deep pink streak in the sky, which disappeared into the horizon behind Kent’s building. Jack blinked his eyes and shook his head. Was he seeing things? His heart caught in his throat as he realized it was probably Superman himself flying past. What Jack must have thought was fuchsia had probably been the man’s red cape. Jack’s heart fluttered with excitement. Had he actually caught a glimpse of the Man of Steel himself? Wow!
There wasn’t any other noise for several minutes, except the blowing debris of a newspaper moving in the non-existent evening breeze. Jack hadn’t expected there to be any activity. Clinton was a quiet street at night. While not as bad as the neighborhood where Jack rested his head, those who lived here rarely ventured out this late at night.
He kept looking to the skies, hoping to catch another glimpse of Superman. He had never seen him in person before. In the papers and on TV, sure, but seeing him live right in front of Jack would make him seem all the more real. He still couldn’t believe that such a man existed.
Another fifteen minutes passed before the door to Kent’s apartment building opened and the man himself, Clark Kent, walked out with a petite woman. She had long, straight, jet black hair and wore a dark conservative business suit. Jack hadn’t even known Clark had been at home this whole time.
The woman was practically hanging off Kent’s arm. After shutting the door behind them, Kent wrapped his other arm around the woman’s waist and lifted her off the ground to press a less than innocent kiss on her lips.
Jack’s jaw dropped. Bobby had said that Kent was head over heels in love with Lois Lane. Bobby had said that Kent was as trustworthy as they come. Bobby had never been wrong, not as far as Jack had ever known him. What had happened? Why was Kent kissing this other woman? Oh, God! What had that drowned spider really meant? Had she broken up with him?
Kent’s voice carried easily over the street in quiet of the late hour. “Stay, Lo—”
The dark haired woman placed her fingers over his mouth, cutting off whatever he had been about to say. “
Lola is my sister,” she corrected, stepping out of his embrace.
“No. Wanda is Lola’s
blonde sister and still hidden away up in my apartment,” Kent said.
Jack didn’t think his jaw could fall open any further.
Two women? Kent had two women at the same time in his apartment?
Kent then continued by stating the obvious, “You, on the other hand, have long raven hair,
Minha.”
“You could call me ‘Minnie’,” the woman teased, adjusting her thin rectangular glasses, which made her appear a bit Asian in descent. Her voice sounded familiar, but Jack couldn’t place it.
Kent grinned. “As in mouse?”
“Don’t forget that underneath all this, I’m still a Mad Dog,” the woman growled, grabbing his arm between her fingers. “Maybe now I’m a Doberman Pinscher, too.”
“Hey!” Kent squealed, pulling his arm back.
“That didn’t hurt and you know it,” the woman said, slapping his arm playfully.
Kent wrapped his arm around her waist again as they continued down the street.
After they passed Jack, he scrambled around to the other side of the planter, so that he wouldn’t be seen if they turned around. He must have made more noise than he thought, because that was exactly what Kent did two seconds later. Kent stopped suddenly and turned around, looking directly towards where Jack was panting on the far side of the planter.
“What?” Minnie asked.
“Someone’s there,” Kent hissed, all traces of humor gone from his voice. He moved the woman behind him and stepped into the street. All the while, he kept staring at the exact spot where Jack was hiding. He even tilted his glasses down as if that would help the man see better in the dark.
“No one could have followed us and you know it,” Minnie said softly, but her voice still shook as if she were trying to convince herself of that. “Do you see anything?”
“Lead…”
A cat chose that moment to jump out of the planter, scaring Jack half to death.
“Don’t be so jumpy, Chuck. It’s just a cat,” Minnie said, taking Kent’s arm and pulling him back to the far side of the street.
“You know he has spies everywhere and his resources are inexhaustible,” Kent said, reluctantly pulling his gaze from where Jack sat crouched in the shadows and returning it to Minnie. “You aren’t safe anywhere in Metropolis,
Minha.”
Jack waited until they were back across the street before he exhaled. That had been close.
“I know,” Minnie admitted almost too softly for Jack to hear. “But I’m not going to let anyone scare me out of my city. We’ll get him, Chuck. We
have to.”
“And if we don’t? If we run out of time before we find the goods on him, then what?” Clark asked, stopping and looking directly into her eyes.
Jack noticed that Kent wasn’t taking the lead and suggesting to this woman what he thought they should do. He wanted
her to tell him what path to follow.
Man, he is so whipped.“Then we fly away into the sunset, never to be heard from again, until we do have the goods on him,” Minnie replied, setting her hands on his chest.
Or maybe Kent is just really, really smart.“You would be willing to leave Jimmy in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, and your mother to his mercy,” Clark stated with surprise more than asked.
Or not.“Of course not! We might retreat, but we’ll never let him win,” Minnie said, poking Kent’s chest. “Never!”
Clark brushed her cheek with his fingers, moving a lock of hair behind her ear. “I love you.”
“Anyway,” Minnie said demurely, dodging another one of Kent’s kisses with a sly grin. “I hear I have Superman wrapped around my pinkie.”
“Very funny,” Clark said dryly, following her.
“I thought so,” she replied with a giggle, and Jack realized from where he recognized her voice.
They turned the corner and disappeared from Jack’s sight. He knew Bobby was never wrong.
*********************
Counting Down the Days
*********************Lois caught Robertson, the LNN News Director and her direct supervisor, in the hall. “Hey, what happened to that disk I gave you? I’ve been expecting some new investigation exonerating Superman and EPRAD, and I’ve seen bupkis.”
She hadn’t actually expected anything to come of the copy of the Nightfall Virus that she had given Robertson, but she had promised to give him the data she had and wanted to show she could follow through on her promises. Anyway, with the Daily Planet out of commission, they had to start rebuilding Superman’s reputation somewhere, and currently the only news outlet any of them had access to was LNN. Also, she wanted to prove another one of her hunches.
“Was that the only copy of the virus you had?” Robertson asked.
She hadn’t been born yesterday. Of course, she had made a copy, but neither her boss nor Lex Luthor needed to know that she was a double agent. “Why?”
“Apparently, when LexComp looked at it, they only found some spreadsheet file,” he said in a low tone.
“The virus is buried in the file,” she explained, a bad feeling building in her gut. If the disk was bad, could it have been switched out while in police custody? “I told you that.”
He nodded, looked around, and then waved Lois into an empty alcove. “Not anymore. Apparently, the disk has been disinfected.”
“What do you mean? You
said we were a team. You
said that I could trust you. You said that you’d take care of it,” she hissed, actually disappointed that Robertson turned out to be another one of Lex’s cronies. She had begun to respect him after she inadvertently on-purpose overheard him arguing on the telephone with someone above his pay-grade how LNN’s news coverage of Superman was biased and more a joke than a reflection of reality. “I didn’t think that you’d stoop to kill my evidence and my story by sabotage.”
“
I didn’t sabotage
your story, Lois,” Robertson retorted, patting his chest. “First of all, it isn’t
your story. Secondly, it must have been done by someone higher up the food chain.” He gave her a knowing look.
“Are you suggesting…?” Lois knew exactly what he was saying, and actually gave him points for having the guts to bring it up to her face less than a week before her wedding to Lex.
“Not officially,” he replied, holding up his hands. “When the story broke that EPRAD had faulty data and that Nightfall Major may not have posed a threat to Earth, I was brought to a meeting and told that if evidence ever surfaced proving that EPRAD’s data had been altered, I needed to clear said evidence with legal first…”
“Bender?” Lois asked, even though Bender wasn’t in-house counsel for LNN.
Robertson’s expression confirmed her guess.
“Damn,” she grumbled as she started pacing. “I know that Lex hates Superman, but I thought it was a personal thing, jealousy over Superman’s quick climb to fame bruising his ego,” she lied. She knew exactly why Lex hated Superman, several reasons in fact, but that was strictly need-to-know, and Robertson hadn’t earned that right.
Robertson held up his hands in self-defense. “My hands are tied, Lois. Without the evidence, we don’t have a story.”
“Then I’ll get you that evidence, or die trying,” she said, turning to storm off.
He set a hand on her arm, stilling her. “No story is worth dying for,” he said softly.
God, she missed Perry’s do or die attitude. She missed everything about the Daily Planet. Well, almost everything. She didn’t miss Ralph.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she retorted, pulling her arm free. “I’ve got a story to…”
“You have a wedding to prepare for, Ms. Lane,” Robertson reminded her. “Don’t forget you’re still on city hall duty until the end of the day, and then you’re on hiatus until you return from your honeymoon.”
House arrest was more like it.
“The boss wouldn’t like it if you died on your last day of work before the wedding,” he said, shooting her a weak smile for his bad joke.
Neither would Superman.
“Well, then, I’ll make sure I don’t do that then,” Lois snapped. So much for her brief tenure at LNN rebuilding her career that Lex had ruined.
***
The moment Clark opened the door, Perry burst through waving a paper up in the air. “I’ve found it!” he announced.
Clark’s apartment had become investigation central. Both Clark and Jimbo lived there, it was located downtown, and because, frankly, all the guys were slightly scared of Alice White.
“What’d you find, Chief?” Jimbo asked from his spot on Clark’s couch.
Jimbo had been once more perusing the Metropolis Star’s help wanted section. He had been complaining just before Perry’s knock on the door interrupted him, how much he hated how they organized their classifieds. Clark figured it had more to do with Jimbo’s crushed career ambitions than his ability to find a job to give him a paycheck. The worst thing to bring to an interview was low self-esteem.
Clark had felt it wasn’t right for him to use his abilities to dig for gold as he had before leaving his old dimension. His job opportunities here, as an unknown agent, were far greater than when everyone knew his secret. He helped the Kents by night, earning farmhand labor pay for being the magical elf to their shoemaker’s farm. He also had gotten a part-time shift unloading freight down at the wharf. He had bumped into Reed and Jake, the men who had rescued him from Hob’s Bay, one night when he had gone searching for his lost memories.
Recently, he had spent more daylight than nighttime hours sleeping, usually while he knew Lois was safely ensconced at LNN. For the past few weeks, he had been averaging only two to three hours of shuteye each day. That was if he factored out the time lost waking up in a cold sweat from Lois and Lex nightmares.
Every waking daylight or evening hour of his days was spent digging into Luthor and LexCorp’s past, checking on Lucy in L.A., or following Lois between work and home, or her evenings out with her faux fiancé. Clark also made sure Superman was available at least once daily to show that he was still doing good somewhere in the world.
It had been Lois’s idea not to let LNN’s ever more negative coverage defeat the Man of Steel. While other media outlets outside of Metropolis still spoke about him in a favorable light, it seemed LNN’s negativity was having a far greater impact on turning popular opinion against him.
Clark knew that Lois continued to work hard behind the scenes at LNN to fight for Superman, but he also grasped it was an uphill battle. Now that they had proof that an outside source had compromised EPRAD’s data, which was currently being verified by the independent S.T.A.R. Labs computer sciences division, it was only a matter of time before Superman’s reputation was restored and the real villain was exposed.
“Proof that Luthor actually
did insure the Daily Planet,” Perry replied, drawing Clark’s thoughts back to the present. “I knew a businessman with his experience wouldn’t have owned the paper for an hour, let alone a week without insuring the money he had put into it. He had insurance through a subsidiary of LexCorp called Lexel Investments.”
“Well, that doesn’t make sense,” Jimbo said, setting down the want ads. “Why would he insure the Daily Planet through one of his own companies, if he planned on blowing it up? Wouldn’t it be a losing deal? Since the Daily Planet was destroyed, Lexel would have to pay out. He incurs a loss either way.”
Perry nodded. “That’s true, but they’re also less likely to look into the particulars of a payout as an outside insurance company would.”
“It would be like moving money from one branch to another, instead of getting an influx of money from another source,” Clark said, opening his fridge and offering a diet soda to the Chief. Since Jimbo had moved in, the healthier options in his kitchen were slowly giving way to the junk food side of the aisle. It wasn’t as if Clark had much of an appetite lately, anyway. “It would be a great way to cover up money coming in which wasn’t legally supposed to be there.”
“You mean, like cooking the books?” the Chief stated more than asked, accepting the soda and pouring it into a glass he took from Clark’s cabinet. “I’ll check into Lexel Investments and see what other payouts to LexCorp, Luthor, or its subsidiaries it made over the last couple of years.”
“Out of curiosity, how much was the policy for?” Clark asked, getting out the bottle of apple juice for himself.
“About twice what it would take to repair it,” Perry said, sitting down at the table.
Jimbo whistled. “So, if he’s taking in money from somewhere else and he’s just washing it through Lexel, where did this money come from?”
“That’s another question to add to our list,” Clark grumbled, setting down the bottle of juice a little harder than necessary. He shut his eyes and took a deep breath as he leaned against the counter.
“The wedding’s coming up quickly, isn’t it?” Perry said after a minute.
“Yeah,” Clark admitted. “If we don’t find enough to put Luthor down for good…” He shook his head. “If Lois has to go on the run, it’ll take twice as long to clear Jimmy’s name. It would be more difficult to overturn a conviction than to clear him of all charges beforehand, especially if we’re using aliases and looking over our shoulders every step of the way. If we run, and Luthor does have Ellen Lane, as Lois suspects…” His voice faded, not wanting to elaborate what could happen to Lois’s mother.
Lois had been right to put a kibosh on running away together when they had reconciled the day the Daily Planet was bombed. Clark had dreamed of being with Lois twenty-four hours a day, but not like that. That kind of paranoia wasn’t romantic; it was damaging. It was how his relationship with Lana had felt after he had told her the truth. Oh, she had never said anything outright, and had denied it the couple times he had asked, but he couldn’t help noticing her skittish glances double-checking every person they saw to see why they were looking at him… and worse, if they looked at
her any differently after looking at him.
No, paranoia didn’t do a relationship any good. Did that mean that he shouldn’t put together everything necessary for that contingency, the life on the road with Lois, including a suitcase full of her clothes taken from their laundry dates? Absolutely not! It was already waiting for their hasty arrival next to his duffle in the Kents’ guest bedroom. Clark merely hoped that he would have another more celebratory excuse to whisk Lois away to Smallville for an impromptu holiday… and a vital discussion.
Clark had waited a full forty-five minutes for Lois the previous Sunday for her to arrive in the laundry room before heading upstairs to see what had delayed her. He felt uncomfortable visually scanning her apartment through everyone else’s and he hadn’t been able to hear her voice over the hum of everyone else’s televisions, so he had gone all the way up to the roof to scan down into her top floor apartment.
He hadn’t been able to hear Lois talking, because she was alone in her apartment. She had been doing laundry all right… in her new built-in washer and dryer that Luthor must have had installed in her apartment. Evidently, Luthor hadn’t liked that Lois went out of his sight for several hours every Sunday.
Clark was surprised that Luthor hadn’t installed cameras on the roof or in the laundry room instead… the cheaper option, especially being that Lois was – to Luthor’s knowledge – marrying him in less than two weeks. That was Luthor, though. Why do something for less when one could make a big huge unnecessary gesture?
Lois had called him on Monday, apologizing in hushed tones from the mobile phone Clark had given her and saying that she would’ve rejected her new personal laundry room, but that Luthor had installed them Saturday night while they were out at a charity dinner. Since Clark had been following her, he hadn’t noticed the additional appliances either. Nothing like an added convenience in her prison cell.
“We have him, don’t we?” Jimbo asked, glancing between them. “Can’t we take what we know about the insurance fraud to your friend at the MPD and have Mr. Luthor arrested and my cuz freed?”
“Unfortunately not, Jim,” Perry replied. “All Luthor has to say was that he was working on plans to rebuild the paper, but was only postponing it until after he returned from his honeymoon.”
Something tickled Clark’s memory. His brow furrowed in thought. He hadn’t put much stock in what Luthor had said; putting it down as another empty promise, the man hadn’t planned to fulfill. “He said as much to Lois,” Clark murmured.
“What?” Perry said, turning around to face him.
“Luthor told Lois he would give her the Planet and the money to rebuild it
after they were married,” Clark said. “As a wedding present.”
Actually, those weren’t Lex Luthor’s exact words. From what he had said, it sounded as if Lois promised to marry the man
only once Luthor had given his word regarding the Daily Planet’s future in return. Just a few short months ago, Clark was grasping at this idea as a viable excuse as to why Lois accepted Luthor. Now… he winced as the concept pinched his heart.
Clark hadn’t asked Lois about it, figuring it was more of Luthor’s bluster. Lois and Clark’s time together was too short and far between that many of the items they needed to discuss were often pushed to the side, in order to savor the time they did have enjoying each other’s company.
“I’m sure… she wouldn’t, CK,” Jimbo sputtered. “Not even to…”
Deep down, in the core of his heart, Clark knew that Lois would never marry Luthor, even to save the Daily Planet. “She won’t,” Clark answered definitively. He wouldn’t let her martyr herself in that manner.
If Clark had to make love to her himself to stop her from willingly marrying Luthor to save the Daily Planet, it was a sacrifice he was prepared to make.
Some things were worse than death.
***
At dusk, Clark landed in an alley on Third Street and spun into his hobo disguise. He had rubbed some camphor under his nose to mask the smell of his clothes.
Martha had seemed to enjoy far too much helping him muck up these second hand clothes he used for farming. A part of him thought he had the odor of the country more than the city though. In a last ditch effort to halt summer from taking hold, rain had fallen during the last week in Metropolis. Therefore, Martha had decided that a mildew smell mixed with cheap alcohol would do the trick, but Clark thought she might have added in some urine to round out the tones. Of course, it could have been the piglet he caught the other day. She didn’t seem to like flying very much.
Either way, Clark reeked to high heaven even when he tried to avoid using his nose. He would be lucky if Lois’s contact Bobby Bigmouth’s eyes didn’t water when he approached him. Even the flight back from Smallville hadn’t done much to air out the smell. He decided, then and there, never to get on Martha Kent’s bad side.
After waiting in line for two hours, Clark finally made it inside and to the counter. “Hey,” he said to the woman serving food. “Did Bobby cook tonight?”
“Sure did. You’re in for a treat,” the woman replied with a smile, handing Clark a plate of food. “Bobby’s been a godsend.”
Clark dipped his pinky in the sauce and then stuck it into his mouth. His stomach rumbled in anticipation loud enough for her to have heard it. “Mmmm. Thanks,” he mumbled, glancing down to mask the blush creeping up his cheeks. Taking his plate, he grabbed a roll and some silverware before heading for a spot at a recently emptied table.
He took a bite, and the food melted in his mouth. It tasted heavenly. Clark would make sure that the Superman Foundation supplied Bobby and the Fifth Street Mission well with good staples. Even those out on the streets occasionally deserved a meal as well as this. Dipping a piece of his bread in the sauce, Clark stretched out his hearing in hopes of narrowing down the object of his quest.
No such luck. Someone was talking about baseball stats and how the game wasn’t the same since Mantle retired. Another guy was asking about Folsom Street shelter and whether it had available beds during the summer. A couple of guys were whispering really low and discussing an upcoming ‘job’, something about some grocery store owner not paying his fair share to ‘The Boss’.
Clark’s eyes opened and he glanced around the room until he spotted the two lowlifes he had overheard. Normally, he didn’t like using tips picked up by his eavesdropping, but it wouldn’t be fair if that grocery store owner got hurt because Superman had turned a blind eye to good information just because of how he got it, either.
He hurried and finished his food. After the two young men left, Clark leisurely walked up to the counter, where the woman was currently cleaning up. He coughed to get her attention. “Excuse me,” he said, when she turned his way. “That was delicious. Is Bobby still here? I’d love to thank him personally.”
She smiled at his compliment and her gaze swept the room. “Nope, he’s already left. He’s usually first in line.” She nodded to a picture along the wall, announcing ‘Volunteers of the Month.’ A man with a mop of curly hair and a big grin had won the big prize for 1993, and most of the ones for 1994, so far. In each picture, he was holding a plate with a different kind of food on it.
“I guess I’ll try back another time,” Clark replied.
At the doors, his gaze swept the room once more for Jack, but not seeing him either, Clark continued outside. He checked up and down the street and saw the two guys he had overheard earlier standing near a bench, smoking, a block and half away. At least, he hadn’t lost them. He shuffled lower into his jacket, drooping his shoulders, as he walked casually towards them. A quick glance from under the brim of his hat, and Clark determined that they were in their late teens or early twenties.
“So, when do you want to hit it?” the younger man said to the older one.
“Tonight. Late. We’re supposed to take the till and bust up as many shelves as possible, make it look like a robbery gone bad. The boss thinks it’s the best way to teach Chen his lesson,” the older boy said. “He needs to pay one way or another.”
“Do you think he sells hair gel? If so, I need to pick some up,” the younger one said, running his hand through his greasy mullet. “My hair isn’t spiking the way it should, man. I look like some country douche bag.”
What was it about people from the city bashing hard working country folk? Okay, true, Clark had known some slackers at Smallville High, but still…
“You
are a douche bag, Pete.” The older one chuckled at his lame pronouncement, blowing a puff of smoke into the air.
“Yeah, well, you’re my brother, so if I’m a douche bag, so are you,” Pete retorted. “Spikes are menacing, John. Without the spikes, I can’t strike fear into our customers.”
“Fear? Please, Pete. You couldn’t even scare that hooker into giving you a blow for free. How are you going to scare old man Chen into opening his till to you?” John said. He dropped his cigarette to the ground and smashed it out with the toe of his army boot.
“Hey, that’s not fair, John. Chen will open up to persuasion,” Pete said, stabbing the bench with his pocketknife. “Chicks are different, man. Anyway, I didn’t want your sloppy seconds. I do fine on my own.”
“Yeah. But
I don’t have to pay for it,” John replied.
Clark was close enough now that he caught the older boy’s attention.
“Come on, Pete,” John said, nudging his brother’s shoulder with a nod back towards Clark. “Let’s go get ready for tonight.”
***End of Part 169*** Part 170 Comments
