New Beginning 962

I snapped another few pictures of Hanson. Somehow, the little vices of the “good” people made the best blackmail. If I had been taking pictures of Joss Burke playing around with a girlfriend, and had threatened to tell his father, J.B., or Joss’s wife, Joss wouldn’t have batted an eye. But a picture of Samuel Hanson, teetotaler, downing three glasses of gin? With a single photograph, I would be able to talk him into selling his company to J.B. The way C & H Imports had been performing in the market lately, I was doing Hanson a favor.

I snapped a few pictures of random things, just so nobody would notice I was targeting Hanson. A dwarf drinking from a bottle of brandy, a businessman in a rundown suit, two pixies singing tipsily, the questionable picture behind the barman. The barman noticed me taking the last shot and raised an eyebrow. I stared him down. All right, so now I looked like a cheapskate voyeur instead of a slumming photographer.

Hanson waved for a fourth glass. I dropped a few coins on my table and walked out. He didn’t look like he planned to go anywhere, so I decided to drop by his office and see if I could find anything better than a little hypocrisy. You never knew with these guys; some of them folded up at the first whiff of a little accusation, and some of them reached for guns and defied the world.

Outside, I climbed in the van. Minutes later the gang poured out of the bar and piled in back like a Barnum & Bailey clown act. Dwarf, Suit, the Pixie Sisters, all drunk as sin and dragging that stupid erotic painting.

“Quiet down,” I said, my command meeting with a chorus of sniggers and fake farts. “We’re going around to C & H Imports, okay? Dig up some serious shit. Guns and stuff. World defying.”

That got their attention. “Now. Which one of you jerks is designated driver?” 

Opening: Rachel Roy.....Continuation: anon.