Jacob steeled himself, reiterating Rule #2 again, and went through the door like he still owned the place. He still had the home field advantage, regardless of what the bouncer had to say about it and concentrated on looking the part. It was all in the delivery, after all.
The Gaff and company were sitting across the room just beyond the cute blonde chick and several of the heavies stood the moment he appeared. He noticed that several of the ones he remembered were missing tonight, probably because they had something better to do like torture hamsters but it might have just been turnover. He hoped it was the turnover of the mortal sort and that they got the most painful sendoff the World of Progress could offer. In general, the Gaff's men were Frothers, but that was probably because their kind worked cheap and weren't much use beyond breaking legs or testing rejected drugs. They were truly the scum at the bottom of the human gene pool and he despised them, but the short mouthy one somehow managed to draw a particularly strong response. In the short time the runt had worked for the Gaff, Jacob had come to hate him. The feeling was mutual and the snide little fucker sneered as he came over to meet him.
"What was his name again?" Jacob asked himself, but couldn't remember. He would love to crack the little bastard's skull, but even with a good four inches of height on him, he knew that was dreaming. Fortunately, he had no doubt that he could outsmart him since the little ingrate could barely lace his boots.
"S'bout time you stopped hid'n in the crapper, Harm," the short man said. The wide flat face made him look like a kid and Jacob smiled wider as he thought of a smart remark about how this guy's family tree didn't branch.
"Yeah, well I had business to take care of," Jacob answered and gestured towards the table. "Shall we?"
Jacob tried again to remember the little man's name, but it still wasn't coming and he mentally shrugged. What did it matter since all of these goons were pretty much interchangeable anyway? Jacob saw Angela and Bull watching as he walked to the table and pushed their stares out of his mind. The big man looked like he was still simmering, but there was something different on her face that might have been concern. He turned his attention to the people at hand and ignored the rest of the room because they were harmless.
The name "Gaff" seemed like a joke when it was applied to the person in front of him because it really didn't seem to fit. It made Jacob think of one of those big guys without a neck who gets a couple creds a head for fishing bodies out of the reservoir -one of the illiterate bottom-feeders that isn't usually worth his attention instead of the small, classy woman in front of him. While she may have come from that kind of world, it didn't show now and she looked every bit as corporate as any other patron in the bar. The harshness of the dark eyes was the only thing that gave her away and Jacob felt the ice forming in his gut as she stared through him.
"You're a hard person t'get hold of, Mr. Harm, " she said with a soft voice, the lilt so faint that she nearly sounded human. The only evidence of her Clan roots was the patterned scarf around her neck and the majority of tonight's particular selection of enforcers.
Jacob swallowed, trying to maintain his poise but he knew the beads of sweat on his head were a give away he was nervous. One of the thugs, a non-Frother butcher named Connor pulled a chair out for him and shoved him into it before he could take a seat. He tried to sit with a little grace, but his shin and elbow hit the table hard enough to make him see stars. He covered the wince with as much grace as he could manage.
"I've had a lot to do lately," he answered quietly, both because he was trying to avoid any more attention and because his breath was short. "Sorry if I've inconvenienced you."
Her face shifted into a pleasant smile, but the hard eyes made it unnerving.. Connor and the short red head had moved over to stand behind him and he felt trapped.
"If I felt I had been inconvenienced," she said, casually sipping her drink.. "We certainly wouldn't be speaking now."
Jacob studied her, taking in the details as he looked for a way to defuse what he felt was happening. It was common knowledge that the Gaff only took a personal interest in people if they had a lot to offer or if they had really pissed her off and he wasn't looking forward to finding out which it was. The voice in his head told him to run for it again, but he ignored it. There was no way he could get by her enforcers since he couldn't dodge bullets.
"I appreciate you coming," he said, trying the charmer approach again. "This place has a very nice atmosphere and is ideal for-"
"Cut the bullshit, Harm," she interrupted, the edge on her voice matching her stare. "You owe me and we've been looking for you for two weeks."
"As I said, SLA has had me busy on a lot of-" he started, but didn't get far.
"I told you to cut the bullshit," she said taking another sip of her drink and carefully placing the glass exactly in the middle of the wet ring on the napkin. "If I have to tell you again, this conversation's over."
"Of course," he answered and calmly folded his hands in his lap. It was important to let people like her take charge and he waited for her to speak.. She seemed to enjoy taking her time and making him sweat.
"So, Mr. Harm," she said after what had to be a good three or four minutes. " Do you have my money?"
Jacob smiled and quietly let out his breath, in spite of the hard steel coils around his lungs. It was best to keep things simple and let the person on the other side of the table ask all the questions.
"Yes I do," he answered, doing his best to meet her eyes. Jacob realized that it was a mistake as her stare reamed a hole through him and left his resolve leaking out the back of his head and onto the floor. "I have all fif teen thousand."
Her laugh came out like a bark, stark enough to draw uncomfortable glances from the nearby patrons. The thugs responded by looking back at the patrons, who quickly turned back to their own little pastel worlds. A few, including the cute blonde, decided now was a good time to leave and filed awkwardly out the door. Now that was a tragedy, he thought to himself.
"Fifteen?" she asked, an amused tone to her voice. "It was fifteen two weeks ago, but now you owe me forty-nine with interest and collection fees."
"FORTY-NINE?" He asked, losing his composure and almost coming to his feet. Jacob recovered and pushed the outrage back down again before anything happened. That was the way people like her operated and there wasn't anything to gain by pissing her off. Keeping his voice calm and polite was one thing, but the hard part was keeping it out of his eyes. "Forty-nine is perfectly reasonable. You have very good rates."
"Good," she said with a smile. "I knew I could depend upon you to fulfill your end of our agreement."
Cold trembles circled his feet and worked their way upward, past his knees and into his abdomen. He might have been able to get his hands on another ten thousand credits, but forty-nine was impossible. In another week, it would be at least fifty-four plus the bitch's collection fees. This was a roller coaster that he couldn't get off of and his head was spinning.
"So, Mr. Harm," she asked. "You have half of it here with you tonight, don't ya?"
"Half?" he started and smiled nervously. The little redheaded creep grinned widely at him, reading the expression for the shock that it was. Jacob's little voice came up with what he thought was another good idea.
"I have most of it with me, but Bryce has the rest."
Bryce was his best friend by default, his son-of-a-bitch half-brother, and the partner that had gotten him into this mess in the first place. They had run scams together since they were kids, but Bryce had dug them into a hole so deep this time that they couldn't climb out. He had found out the hard way that the Changtown gambling houses cheat better than they could and Jacob had gone against his instincts and backed him up. That seemed like years ago when he was still a stupid kid, but it had only been a month. "A month of absolute fucking Mondays", he mused to himself.
If Jacob hadn't found a way to cover the debt, the Wah Chang bangers that run that sector would have chopped Bryce into eel food by now. Instead, Jacob had let sentiment outweigh judgment and stepped into the sharp end to help. As he looked at the Gaff's growing smile, he asked himself if it would have really been a bad thing if he had just cut and run? After all, Bryce had gotten himself into this and had gone under ground instead of sticking around to help him now. "No, "the voice answered "It was time to make things right." That meant cashing Bryce in, once and for all. There was a spark in the Gaff's eyes that matched her smile and he felt what he hoped was enthusiasm leaking down his leg.
"Actually, Mr. Harm. We've already spoken with your friend Bryce and he wasn 't willing to help much."
The men around Jacob laughed quietly, almost like they were sharing a dirty joke and he shuddered. Looking at their faces and back at the Gaff, he couldn't read anything except amusement and that worried him. That was when Connor leaned over his shoulder and placed a hand-sized box on the table in front of him. Jacob looked at it and then back at the woman, who smiled warmly.
"Go ahead and open it," she prodded, but Jacob didn't touch it.
"I have no interest in seeing what part of Bryce your associates have cut off to try to shock me," he answered. "I am beyond this sort of intimidation."
He wasn't going to play this game. They were no more than crude butchers and low-browed Neanderthals and he wouldn't give them the satisfaction of panicking or getting nauseous. His Father's favorite saying came to mind, the one about fucking themselves and dying, but he kept it to himself.
Instead of taking offense like he expected, the Gaff was struggling to stifle laughter and waved Connor forward again to open the box for him. Jacob let out his breath slowly, feigning boredom and looked down. Inside was the clichéd red-stained cotton he expected but there was something else, something that made him stare. He squinted, not sure what the bloody lump of meat was but the realization hit him like a blast of cold rain. The lump of bloody meat couldn't have belonged to Bryce. It didn't even belong to a man..
The group's chuckling burst into laughter and Jacob looked from one face to another, not understanding how someone could do this. His mouth was wide open and he felt the room spin around him, the wall of enforcers towering around him and cutting off the air. The Gaff's voice brought him to look forward again and he met her eyes, which had teared up with laughter.
"Are ya now?" she asked, wiping at her tears. "Are you really beyond THIS?"
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