Page 15 of A River Red With Blood
In PubKey, all was movement.The kid with the iPad reached across his body for his weapon (he definitely hadn’t paid attention to his elders) only to find himself staring down the twin barrels of a sawed-off shotgun, said shotgun held close to the body of the blond bartender who had, only moments earlier, been asking him about the Haskell syntax decorating the cover of his iPad: the code for the Fibonacci sequence rendered as a single line—fibs=0:1:zipWith(+)fibs(tailfibs)—when other computer languages might have required multiple lines to communicate the same information.The bartender seemed genuinely interested as he explained all this to her.The kid, whose name was Amir, had even considered asking her on a date.Now here she was, brandishing a weapon that could potentially remove his head from his shoulders if her finger twitched too hard on the trigger—not that her finger showed any signs of twitching, because it, like the shotgun, was very still.If she pulled the trigger, it wouldn’t be by accident, and if Amir forced her to kill him, she would have few regrets.Amir was now glad he hadn’t asked her out.The humiliation of the refusal would only have compounded an already difficult and embarrassing state of affairs.
“I’m going to move my hand to the right,” he said, “away from my gun.”
His voice shook.He received the barest of nods in response.In the mirror, he saw two guns pointing at Ulyan by the door, who hadn’t even had time to put down hisNew York Postbefore he was disarmed.Amir had never regarded Ulyan highly, and now had confirmation; but then, Ulyan hadn’t respected Amir either, so they were both right.Farther along the bar, Kade wasmotionless, as was Louis, but Louis was more relaxed than Kade because two Japanese men were not leveling pistols at him.This disappointed Amir almost as much as the attitude of the bartender, since he had always associated the Japanese with politeness.He had never seen a Japanese person holding a gun outside of a war movie.
Behind Amir, another of what he had mistaken for the bar’s regular clients locked the door and extinguished the neon sign in the window.Finally, the music was turned off, leaving them all briefly in silence, broken by the ringing of a cell phone.The man who had locked the door answered the call, acknowledged whatever was said, then hung up and signaled to Louis.In the mirror, Amir could see the rest of the bar’s clientele were also holding pistols of varying makes and calibers.Either the tech industry was even more cutthroat than rumor suggested, or Kade had walked them into a trap.
The older bartender came from behind the bar to relieve Amir of his gun.She approached him from the left side, keeping clear of the sawed-off barrels, in case Amir decided to do something stupid that necessitated his decapitation.
“Are you left-handed?”the younger bartender asked him, though Amir supposed it should have been her dark-haired colleague who asked, since the latter was the one doing the disarming.
“No, right,” said Amir.
“Then why wear your gun on the left side?”
Amir blushed.
“I don’t know.”
But he did: because he thought it was cool, despite Kade having stressed, on more than one occasion, that it wasn’t.
“Dumb,” said the woman.
“I did warn him,” said Kade.He continued looking at Louis, one hand resting by his Scotch, the other held away from his body.“But these young people, they just don’t listen.”
“They may not listen any closer after today,” said Louis.“You haven’t covered yourself in glory here.”
“I didn’t expect you to take over the whole bar.I didn’t eventhink it was your kind of place, though I should have guessed from the shitkicker music.”
“Black shitkicker music.”
“Whatever.”
“Your loss.By the way, we took your boy outside too.”
Kade frowned.
“Pity.I had higher hopes for him.”
“At least he’s still alive to learn from the experience,” said Louis.“In lower company, he might not have been so lucky.Same goes for the two here.As for you, I can’t say.You always were hard to call.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Take it how you like, I don’t care.”
Louis got up from his stool and took three steps back.“You can stand now.One of my friends will frisk you, though it would help everyone breathe easier if you were to point him in the right direction.It’s polite to show willing.”
Kade stood.
“Belt, right side,” he said.“That’s all.”
“Seriously?”
One of the Japanese chess players removed the 9mm Mossberg from Kade’s gun belt and ejected the magazine and the round in the chamber.He then proceeded to search Kade thoroughly, all while his opponent continued to target Kade’s head.But Kade was telling the truth and no other weapon was discovered.
Louis resumed his seat and indicated that Kade should do the same.
“I didn’t come here to kill you,” said Kade, “despite what you might be thinking.Even if I had, one gun would have been enough for the job.”
