Rogues Gallery Read Online Free PDF Page A

same boarded complex of wood and nails, crisscrossed and flimsy looking. There were two open doorways to the right and left, one for males, the other for females. Zandor and company went right to where men did their business.
    The entrance was crowded with men standing and talking though it didn’t appear to Zandor any of them were anxious about pissing. He shoved through them. One man was peeing right there, only five feet from the entranceway, and Zandor sucked in his teeth.
    One of his men shoved the slob away from the wall and ordered him to use the proper facilities, but Zandor didn’t bother waiting to see how that turned out. The smoke was growing stronger.
    The room consisted of shit holes to the right, perhaps a dozen of them; little more than simple hollow seats where a man could squat and defecate. The left side housed the piss trough, a long rectangular construction designed to collect and dispense hundreds of men’s worth of waste product. It all ran underground.
    Zandor weaved through the crowd. The source of the smoke was near. A drunken jackass smashed into Zandor as he moved around another lug, and the man had not yet pulled up his pants. He bellowed, and some stray piss struck Zandor on the hand. He cursed under his breath and dodged by him, forcing his hand away from one of his knives before he could pull one out and stab the fool in the throat. Too much else was going on.
    The three toughs stood at the far right side of the trough smoking cigarettes. His men rolled up behind him, but Zandor held up a hand.
    “Easy now, lads. Let’s try to talk this out first.”
    He stepped closer and made sure the toughs saw him, smiling. “Hey there, fellas. Listen, we got a strict policy on smoking around here; for obvious reasons. See, it’s real dangerous ‘cuz of all this wood and whatnot all over the place. The whole place is wood, right?”
    They kept smoking. One of them smirked and dropped his lighted cigarette on the ground where it continued to burn.
    “Yeah, well, that’s a good start,” Zandor said. “Go ahead and stomp that out, and we got something nice going on here.”
    The tough looked at him and then kicked the butt across the floor towards him. “You do it then if it’s so important to you.”
    His three men tensed, but Zandor kept smiling. He stepped on the burning brand and held his arms out.
    “It’s important to all of us,” he said. “This place goes up in smoke, we all got problems.”
    The other two looked at each other, scoffed, and kept smoking. They all stared at each other. The crowd nearby was getting annoyed at the extra space they were taking up in the room, but they would have to wait.
    The toughs looked at each other and then started moving off. They passed Zandor and his men, almost daring them to grab the cigs from their hands. Zandor didn’t. He let them go but followed close enough behind. It was easier to move through the crowd because the toughs were strong and practiced enough to create a large space around and behind them.
    Outside the latrine they started moving away, still trailing smoke from their cigarettes. Zandor slowed and watched them walk, suspecting something. It wouldn’t have been this easy.
    “Well, that takes care of them,” Donny said and shook his head. “You want us to follow them, Zee?”
    “Yes I do.”
    They started moving when the toughs stopped and huddled up to one another. A second later, they tossed a flaming bag. He guessed it was shit or something else disgusting and flammable, and the toughs ran off.
    Zandor scoffed. Predictable jackasses. Donny and the others rushed forward as spectators grumbled and stepped back from the burning bag. It wasn’t big but placed in the right location, it might do some damage. Donny and two others stomped it out but not without getting messy.
    Zandor shook his head. It was juvenile and pathetic of Jerrod, but it could’ve proved troublesome if left unchecked. If they wanted to play that way and