Oh, The Games People Play
Toni Taylor moved slowly to the chair at the far end of the table from her brother. She didn’t think he’d already heard the reports the board members were about to share, but she had, and she didn’t want to be anywhere close to him. Johnny still tended to take out his anger and frustration on the objects and people in close proximity to him, and the swelling on her cheek from the last disagreement with her brother had finally gone down. She didn’t need any dental work done, and she didn’t want Johnny to change that.
Johnny slapped the table with his palm. “Awright, this meeting of the Metro Gang is now called to order. What we got?”
No one spoke. “C’mon, guys, we gotta know what’s what. Tommy, tell us about the new coke pipeline.”
Tommy shrugged. “Ain’t nothin’ to tell, Johnny.”
Johnny frowned. “Gotta be somethin’. How much we get shipped in last two weeks?”
Tommy shifted in his chair. “Nothin’. It got shut down soon as we started up.”
Johnny took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “What happened to it?”
“We – we ain’t sure, Johnny.”
“Then tell me what you are sure of.”
Tommy fidgeted some more, then leaned his elbows on the table. “We think maybe that Wanda Detroit dame tipped off the Feds, cause the cops we bought didn’t do nothin’ and ain’t tellin’ us nothin’ either. They’re acting like they don’t know what happened. But the Feds picked up the whole shipment, took the speedboats, and busted both crews.”
Johnny shook his head. “How long till we get another delivery?”
“Well – we ain’t.” Tommy waited for Johnny to speak, then continued when Johnny remained silent. “My Columbian contact says he can’t trust us. They’re gonna do business with somebody else.”
“Somebody else here in the city?”
“Uh – yeah. Leastwise that’s what he told me.”
Johnny took out a cigar and sniffed it without lighting it. “We know who that someone else is?”
“Not yet, but I’m working on it.”
“Keep at it! I wanna know who’s hornin’ in on our business!” The cigar crumbled in Johnny’s grip and he dropped the pieces into a large ceramic ashtray. “Let’s keep going. Angelo, how’s the numbers doin’ this week?”
Angelo spread his hands apologetically. “Collections are down so far this month, Johnny.”
Johnny frowned. “How far down?”
“Over last month? About two percent.”
“That all? That ain’t bad.”
“Maybe not, but they’re down almost nineteen percent from a year ago.”
“Nineteen percent!” Johnny stood and shoved one hand into his pants pocket and gestured with the other as he paced. “What’s the deal, people? Numbers collection is down! Our girls are gettin’ arrested left and right! Coke distribution is down and we can’t find new dealers or suppliers! Will somebody please tell me why that is?”
Toni leaned back in her chair. “One reason is that there’s a new ‘boss’ in Metropolis.”
Johnny leaned over the table and snarled, “So what? We survived competition before! I remember in Pop’s day that he – “
“Pop is in jail, Johnny.”
“I know that! And my little kid sister don’t gotta remind me about it every single day!”
“I do if we keep on – “ she broke off as the door opened. The new blond waitress – the girl’s name escaped Toni’s memory for the moment – walked in carrying a tray of drinks.
No danger there. “As I was saying, I have to remind everyone what happened to Pop can happen to us if we keep on doing business the old way. It doesn’t work any more. We have to modernize if we want to stay in business.”
Johnny leaped to his feet and lifted a fist. Toni thought he would have struck her had she been close enough. “Modernize!” he roared. “Pop’s way was good enough! He sent you to that high-class Ivy League school so’s you could be a better secretary! That’s all you’ll ever be anyway!”
The girl with the tray put a glass down beside Johnny and softly moved on. Toni was sure he didn’t even see her. “I’m not a secretary, Johnny. I have a Masters of Business Administration and I’m a certified insurance underwriter. I’m also a licensed stockbroker and certified financial planner.”
“So go start your own insurance company! As long as I’m in charge here, we do things my way!”
One of the other men at the table slipped the waitress a folded bill as he took his drink. She silently smiled her thanks. The man sipped his drink and softly said, “I think we should at least listen to Toni’s ideas, Johnny. We don’t have to take her advice if we don’t want to.”
Johnny leaned his hands on the table and glared at the man. “Really? You want to take her advice, Benny?”
Benny shrugged and looked at the table. “I don’t know, since I haven’t heard it yet.”
Johnny looked at the other men at the table in turn. “How about the rest o’ you mooks? You wanna listen to my little sister’s advice too?”
They murmured and shifted nervously in their chairs and broke eye contact with him, but without actually coming out and saying it, Toni knew they were willing to listen to her. Whether it was Johnny’s abrasive manner, her qualifications, her gender, or the current business climate, she didn’t care. She had their attention for the moment.
Now all she had to do was to give them better ways to do business. She waited for Johnny to nod and sit down. “First of all, we need to achieve a lower profile. We’re too public right now. Too many people know who most of you are, and they also know what you really do for a living. That’s got to change.”
Benny nodded. “I see the wisdom in that, Toni, but what do you suggest that we do?”
“The same kind of thing Frank Lucas did in Harlem back in the late seventies and early eighties. He diverted public opinion to his side by providing his customers free food, basic medical care, child care, and educational help for their kids. It didn’t matter that he was robbing them blind by selling them heroin as long as he set up soup kitchens and free clinics for them. For the most part, they refused to cooperate with the police in any investigation into Lucas.”
Benny frowned in thought. “I think that might be a good basic suggestion, Toni. What do you think, Louis?”
Across the table, Louis shook his head. “Isn’t Lucas in Federal prison now?”
Toni nodded. “Yes, but not for narcotics. It was for the killings he ordered. He let the power and the money go to his head and he started acting like a dictator.” She looked pointedly in her brother’s direction. “That’s one of the things that has to stop right now.”
Johnny stood abruptly. “Hey! If I wanna go out on the town with my lady, I have a right to do that! And if somebody gets fresh with her, then I got a right to work him over and teach him a lesson! What would you do different if you was running things?”
Toni started to speak, but Louis spoke up again. “Your quick anger is going to be your undoing one day, Johnny. I don’t know that Toni should be running the business, but she has some fresh ideas. And she has control of her temper, which at this point you do not.”
Johnny slammed the table with his hand again. “I’m runnin’ this gang!” He pulled a pearl-handled semiautomatic from under his coat, fired three rounds into the far wall, then pointed the muzzle at Toni’s head. “You take orders from me! Not the other way around!”
Toni heard everyone else in the room, including the blond with the drink tray, hit the floor between shots. The analytical part of her mind wondered briefly how much damage the bullets had done to the far wall and the storage room beyond. But the larger part, the part that knew how much violence a forty-five caliber ACP round could do to human flesh at a range of ten feet, was screaming at her to dive behind something very solid where Johnny couldn’t shoot her.
But she didn’t dare move from her chair, even assuming she could find cover. She had to risk her brother’s mercurial wrath in order to gain respect from the men in the room. If she dove to the floor with the rest of the council members – which they were most eager to do – she’d lose whatever good will she’d built up with them. The moment wasn’t just about her survival, it was about her image with the rest of the directors and her influence with them.
She forced her voice to remain low and level. “Shooting me won’t make the truth go away, Johnny. This isn’t a power play and I’m not trying to take over or push you out of the way. I’m only trying to maximize profits and minimize risk for all of us.”
He held the pistol in place for four agonizingly long seconds, then lowered the hammer and returned the weapon to his shoulder holster. “Awright. We’ll listen. But we ain’t gonna do nothin’ just ‘cause you say we oughta do it.”
She nodded and tried to disguise her immense relief. “Fair enough. Shall I present my thoughts now, or should I prepare a detailed document for next time?”
He waved one hand dismissively. “Why don’t you hit the high points now and give us that – that detailed document next time?” He looked around at the rest of the men. “Hey, fellas, you can come out now. Play time’s over.”
Toni looked around as the men slowly regained their seats. Then she glanced over her shoulder at the pale blond still kneeling by the door.
She wasn’t sure, maybe it was just a spilled drink, but it almost looked as if the girl had wet her pants.
Toni sighed in relief as she realized she hadn’t quite done the same thing.
She realized that Johnny had asked her something. “I’m sorry, big brother, what did you say?”
He gave her a ‘stupid-sister’ glare and said, “I asked you if you found out anything about this Wanda Detroit dame yet.”
“Oh.” Toni took a moment to collect her thoughts, then answered. “She has contacts with three or four honest newspapers on the East Coast. One of them is the Miami Herald-Tribune, one is the Gotham Daily News, and one is the Daily Planet here in Metropolis. There are a couple of others I haven’t verified yet.”
“You got any names, who her contacts are?”
“We still don’t know who Wanda really is, but I’m almost certain her Florida contact is a woman named Angela MacDougal. I have some leads on the Gotham contact, but I have no idea about the Metropolis contact. I don’t think Wanda has operated in Metropolis that often. I’m not even sure she’s here now.” She took a breath, held it, then let it out. “But I think she is. If she stays consistent in her pattern of movements, she’s probably in the city now.”
Johnny paused in thought, then nodded. “Okay. We need to put out a contract on this Angela dame – assumin’ that’s okay with my little sister – and make sure we know who the Gotham contact is. When we do, we can just tell one of those Halloween-costume crooks over there and let them take care of it. Probably won’t cost us a dime, either. Some of those wackos would do it just for kicks.” He chuckled. “There’s at least one who’d think it was some kind of a joke instead of a job.”
Toni nodded. “As long as they can’t trace it back to us, Johnny, I don’t have a problem with it.”
He growled an approving laugh. “Now you’re gettin’ smart. Okay, tell us about your big ideas.”
*****
Lois nodded to herself in time as she scribbled notes on the pad of paper in front of her. The small earpiece usually fed recorded music into her right ear, but the modified combination cassette player and FM radio could also pick up the low-power transmitter Lois had hidden in the conference room. At the moment, she was recording the meeting of the Metro Gang leadership in her own special shorthand. As far as the other girls in the band knew, she was working on a new arrangement of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” for their a cappella mini-set later on that week.
None of them – not even Lucy – knew that she’d already finished it and was waiting a day to give it to the group at rehearsal. With all six women singing – assuming Christie could function rationally and would stay with the arrangement – they could really make that song sound rich and full.
But at the moment, Wanda Detroit was putting together another expose on organized crime in Metropolis, using Lois’ arrangement as camouflage. With any luck, she could polish this piece and send it to her contact in Gotham City for distribution among the few news organizations she could trust.
But Lois’ time was running out. The last time she’d spoken to her contact in Gotham, Vicky had said that some very unsavory characters had been snooping around her home and her business. Even with that weird Bat-whatever playing smack-the-bad-guy over Gotham’s rooftops at night, the Vicky Vale connection was about to dry up. And Lois would never knowingly put Vicky in danger. She’d have to warn Vicky that Toni might be on her trail. And she’d also have to warn Angela that the bad guys were onto her, that she’d have to disappear from Miami for a while. The Metro Gang played for keeps.
But this story was too hot to sit on. If she could get it out quickly enough, she might be able to save some lives this time instead of just revealing who the killers had been. Johnny Taylor was a constant danger to society and especially to civilians. He didn’t care who he hurt when he started shooting, as long as he hit the original target. The phrase “collateral damage” didn’t exist in his vocabulary. For all Lois knew, he might have shot someone in the meeting just now.
On the other hand, Toni was actually more dangerous than her brother, because she was willing to move the gang’s criminal activities into the present day and act more like a corporation than a Chicago mobster. Her criminal model wasn’t Al Capone, it was Lucky Luciano, the Mafia don who’d ruled organized crime in America for nearly thirty years. She wouldn’t order a murder out of anger or revenge. It was just business for her.
And Lois didn’t want any other child to grow up without a father. One Lucy Lane was one too many.
She only hoped that she could hang on long enough to make a real dent in the criminal organizations she’d gotten close to. If Toni had found Angela and was closing in on Vicky, it was only a matter of time before she found Wanda’s real identity. And Lois had no illusions about her friendship with Toni making a difference when the survival of Toni’s way of life was at stake. Lois would be found lying dead in a field or an alley or maybe Hobbs Bay, and the Mountaintops would once again have to find themselves a new bass player.
Her last thought almost made her laugh. If concern for the band was uppermost on her mind, then maybe Wanda should disappear for a few months and let the trail cool off. The strain of living with a secret identity was starting to wear on her, and the stress would soon show in her music.
And she couldn’t let that happen. She and Lucy were still committed to making the big time. It was too important a dream to both of them to just let it go.
There was no way she’d let her sister down. Not now, not ever.
Her attention was diverted as a waitress, the new girl Toni had just hired, all but sprinted out of the hallway to the meeting room. She ran in an odd, hunched-over position as if she were hurt. Odd, thought Lois, she looks familiar –
And suddenly Lois realized who it was. The new girl was Linda King.
She’d known Linda slightly in college and hadn’t trusted her then, and nothing in the intervening years had happened to change that. Why was she here? Was she working undercover as a reporter or had she gone completely over to the dark side? And – most importantly – would Linda recognize Lois and tell someone that they’d clashed in college over Linda’s lack of ethics? Would she mention to someone that the band’s bass player had been a reporter on her school newspaper for a year and had specialized in honesty and strict ethics?
Linda disappeared into the locker room without looking around, and Lois realized why she’d been moving with such an odd gait as she spotted the dampness on her uniform shorts. She must have been in the conference room during Johnny’s shooting session and had lost her bladder control.
It would have been funny had the other woman’s presence not made Lois’ situation that much more perilous.
Lois mentally tallied the changes in herself in the years since she’d last seen Linda. Lois was thinner through the middle but broader in the shoulders – from years of hauling musical equipment around – and her hair, which had been long and dark and parted in the middle in college, was now much shorter and lighter with reddish highlights. And Linda hadn’t been part of the club and party scene where Lois had played and sung. Not only that, Linda had always paid far more attention to men in general than to the women around her.
Lois sighed. There was little she could do to reduce the risk except to stay away from Linda as much as possible. Just another headache to deal with
*****
Linda threw her wet clothes into a plastic bag and flushed red again. She’d been in danger before! She’d even been shot at once! She understood that personal danger came with the undercover role she’d volunteered for. So why had she lost control of herself today?
She knew why. She’d lost it because Johnny Taylor was a complete psycho with a pistol in his hand, a killer who didn’t much care who he shot. One of those bullets had showered dust on her hair just as she was dropping to the floor, and she knew that if she’d hesitated half a second longer, her brains might have been splattered all over that wall.
The thought made her shudder and sob and her belly threatened to let go again. But she clenched her fists tightly and slowly forced herself to calm down and relax. She’d clean up, change into dry clothes, and act like nothing had happened. She’d do her undercover job as a waitress and also her real job as an undercover reporter. She wouldn’t call attention to herself in either role. And she’d make Clark proud of her.
She was just glad he hadn’t come in yet. She didn’t want to explain herself to him or listen to him tell her how dangerous this assignment was for her and that she should go back to the Planet and be safe. It was just as dangerous for him! Why couldn’t he be the one to be careful? Why couldn’t he see her for the woman she was, the one she desperately wanted people to see in her? Why couldn’t he see how much she cared about him and how much he needed her?
She had to get the story. She had to take chances. She had to make Clark see how skilled and valuable she was as a partner – as his partner. And she had to let Perry know that she deserved the best possible raise on her upcoming annual review.
Maybe she’d even get a Kerth nomination out of this. The thought helped calm her as she pulled fresh tights on. She was just glad her one pair of spike heels hadn’t gotten wet. Now it was time to go back to work.
She could do this. She had to.
