The Barbed-Wire Kiss Read Online Free PDF

long have you known him?” Harry said.
    “Like I said, about two months. I never met him before that time Jimmy introduced us, the night we made the deal.”
    He took a disposable lighter from the box, got the joint going. He puffed deep on it, the paper crisping as it burned. He held out the joint, blew smoke to the side, the acrid smell of it filling the air.
    Harry took the joint, drew on it, felt the harshness fill his lungs. He restrained the urge to cough, blew the smoke out in a thin cloud, waved it away from his face.
    “He doesn’t have much in the way of an arrest record,” he said. He handed the joint back. “About fifteen years ago he was indicted for attempted bribery while trying to buy a bar in North Jersey. The case never went to trial and the charges were eventually dropped. The councilman he had supposedly bribed resigned, so that ended it.”
    Bobby drew on the joint, turned his head, and blew smoke at a hovering mosquito.
    “Right now, he owns five places. Two nightclubs in Florida, two clubs and a restaurant up here.”
    Bobby offered the joint. Harry hit on it briefly, couldn’t control the cough this time. He handed it back, his eyes watering.
    “He owns all the places himself, outright. But some people think he borrowed the seed money on a couple of them from some OC guys in North Jersey.”
    “OC?”
    “Organized crime.”
    “Fuck.”
    Bobby set the joint on the edge of the workbench.
    “Keep in mind, though, the fact he borrowed money from them—if he actually did—doesn’t mean he’s one of them. Chances are, any loans he took out would have been paid back long ago. In fact, it looks like the biggest trouble he’s been in was that Empire East thing.”
    “What was that?”
    “Happened about twelve years ago. It was a dance club he owned up in Wayne. A real meat market—deejays, strobe lights, coke in the back room, the whole deal. One Saturday night, this woman—a regular customer—complained to the bartender that some kid was trying to pick her up, wouldn’t leave her alone. The kid was nineteen, drunk, shouldn’t even have been there.”
    “I think I remember this.”
    “The bartender tells him to take off, but the kid’s drunk—or just stupid—enough to put up a fight and, while the bouncers are throwing him out, he takes a swing at one of them. So they bring him into a back room and take turns knocking him around—five of them. The kid’s unconscious when they finally toss him out the side door. Come closing time, he’s still lying there. So one of the bouncers calls an ambulance and tells them the kid was drunk, went outside, tripped and fell. But he never woke up. He died in the hospital two days later. Multiple skull fractures.”
    A thin line of blue smoke spiraled up from the unattended joint, hung in the air between them.
    “I remember reading about that,” Bobby said. “I didn’t know it was one of Fallon’s places. I never made the connection. What happened to them, the ones who beat him?”
    “Not much. At first they denied everything. Fallon claimed he wasn’t even there. But once the prosecutor’s office started talking to witnesses, the whole story fell apart. Finally, they managed to squeeze one of the bouncers into testifying against the other four as part of a plea agreement. They all eventually pleaded out, involuntary manslaughter and assault charges. Only three of them did time, one of them nine months, and that was the longest sentence. Alcoholic Beverage Control came down pretty hard on Fallon, since the kid was underage to start with. It cost him a few grand in fines and he ended up paying a settlement to the kid’s family. He shut the place down for good shortly afterward.”
    “And that was it?”
    “After the bouncers did their time, Fallon hired them all back to work in his other places. All except the one that turned, of course. One of the ones who went to jail was Lester Wiley.”
    “Why am I not surprised?”
    “Wiley was