The Hard Stuff Read online

  THE

  HARD

  STUFF

  Also by David Gordon

  White Tiger on Snow Mountain: Stories

  Mystery Girl

  The Serialist

  The Bouncer

  THE

  HARD

  STUFF

  DAVID GORDON

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published in the US in 2019 by Mysterious Press, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, New York

  First published in the UK in 2019 by Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © David Gordon, 2019

  The moral right of David Gordon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (HB): 9781838933104

  ISBN (XTPB): 9781838933111

  ISBN (E): 9781838933135

  Images: Shutterstock

  Head of Zeus Ltd

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM

  For Matilde

  Contents

  Also by David Gordon

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PART I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  PART II

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  PART III

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  PART IV

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  PART I

  1

  Joe felt like hell. The last thing he remembered, he was in the back seat of a tricked-out white BMW, riding low to the ground, rims spinning, music thumping, with three Chinese gang kids from Flushing crossing the empty Verrazzano Bridge in the dead of night. Far above him, like the vault of a cathedral, the arches lifted a dark heaven. The cables were strung with stars. He woke up in the parking lot of a diner in the middle of nowhere, the summer sky bluely aglow now, the stars pale, the pink dawn just over the horizon.

  “Good morning, sunshine.” The driver, Cash, was grinning at him the rearview. The other two kids—who’d been introduced as Blackie, up front, and Feather, in back with Joe—both laughed. They all wore tank tops, black or red, baggy jeans, and Nikes. Gold chains and a lot of ink. Razored hair longer on top and tight up the sides. Except for Cash, who was completely buzzed. Joe was white and unshaven with unkempt hair, wearing a plain black T-shirt, old jeans, and black Converse high-tops. He was a dozen or more years older than them. Though today it felt more like a thousand. He had a black eye that still smarted and freshly dried blood on his knuckles, some of it his own.

  “Pit stop, boss,” Feather said. “You want to get up and meet the dude? Or just keep snoring?”

  “You’re louder than the stereo,” Blackie said. “If we didn’t need your help, we’d have smothered you by now.”

  Joe ignored them, focused instead on the clicking in his neck as he yawned.

  “We’re going to eat while we’re here,” Cash said, cutting the engine. “You want something for breakfast?”

  Joe nodded. “Four aspirin.”

  Feather laughed. “Glad you got an appetite at least. You want anything to drink with that?”

  “Yeah,” Joe said. “A bottle of Pepto-Bismol.”

  The guys laughed as Joe got out of the car, slowly unfolding his long frame, like he’d been badly packed for shipping. He stretched and looked around.

  “Where are we anyway?” he asked, trailing behind them. Cash spoke over his shoulder.

  “Somewhere in South Jersey,” he said. “A long way from home.” Home was Queens, New York. They were on their way to Cumberland County, New Jersey, to kill a man.

  *

  The three younger men—Cash, Feather, and Blackie—worked for a Chinese crime boss named Uncle Chen. Joe worked as a bouncer at a club that belonged to his childhood pal Gio Caprisi, who had grown up to run the business once headed by his father—a Mafia boss. Before becoming a bouncer, Joe had grown up to be a soldier, an elite black ops “specialist”—his specialty was killing people—and he’d been very good at it, too, until a small opium problem he developed in Afghanistan led to a not-all-that-honorable exit from the military and the job working for Gio. It had been Gio’s idea to make Joe the sheriff.

  He wasn’t a real sheriff, of course. But when a terrorist plot arose to unleash a virus lethal enough to wipe out a Yankee Stadium–size chunk of the population, Gio, Uncle Chen, and all the other New York bosses—the CEOs of the city’s underworld—chafing under pressure from the government had decided to band together as patriots and New Yorkers and root out any terrorists lurking in their midst. They had not only recruited Joe for his unique skill set but had also invested him with unique authority to chase his quarry through all their territories with their cooperation and support. In the straight world, when you saw something you said something, supposedly, to the law. In the bent world, they called Joe.

  Joe had done the job they gave him. The result was four dead terrorists and two dead criminals. But Uncle Chen’s nephew Derek, a talented young car thief, had gotten killed along the way when he and Joe had crossed paths with some redneck gun nuts at an illegal weapons market. At first, Uncle Chen had blamed Joe. Then it became clear that the bullet that killed Derek was fired from a weapon found on one of the gun nuts, a white supremacist named Jonesy Grables. But due to the lack of witnesses and the general chaos that had reigned at the crime scene, his lawyer had gotten the charges reduced to involuntary manslaughter and bailed him out, at which point Jonesy promptly disappeared. Now one of Uncle Chen’s sources had located him, and he’d sent his men down to tie up this loose end, with Joe very reluctantly along for the ride.

  Meanwhile, with the terrorists eliminated, life back in New York had returned to normal for Gio, for the other bosses, for the law, and for the entire blissfully ignorant civilian population of the city. But not for Joe.

  Not that he didn’t try. He went home to his grandmother’s apartment, where she’d raised him after his parents, both criminals
, had died young. He went back to work at the club. But when Joe picked up a gun again, his nightmares, flashbacks, and panic attacks returned with it, along with the craving for booze and dope to control them. And once that evil genie was out of the bottle, she wasn’t going back without trouble.

  2

  The trouble started as soon as he returned to work at the club. Being a bouncer takes strength, skill, and fast reflexes, but most of all it takes patience. Talking down drunks, extracting gropers, and defusing fights—all without scaring off the paying customers—has as much or more to do with a calm voice and easygoing demeanor as it does with fists. But now Joe was touchy, hungover at work from partying too late the night before or buzzed by the time the club opened from starting too early. He was quick to lose his temper with assholes or, even worse, to be a bit of an asshole himself, running his mouth and aggravating the situation instead of soothing it. That’s how the beef with the gangster rap mogul happened. A week or so after Joe got back to work, the gangster’s star moneymaker, a little white rapper, came into the club. Though really, it began even earlier that evening, at home, when Yelena unexpectedly showed up with Joe’s money.

  Yelena Noylaskya was an expert safecracker, cat burglar, ass kicker, and most likely, stone-cold killer, judging by the underworld tattoos that covered her body and that she had acquired back home in Russia. She and Joe had ended up together on the last job, working, fighting, and eventually sleeping side by side. The last time Joe saw Yelena, she’d been wounded. One of the terrorists’ bullets had sliced her arm as she killed him to save Joe, while Joe raced straight toward a car, firing into the windshield. He was chasing his target—the terrorists’ leader, Adrian Kaan—through the building and up to the roof, which was where Joe left him, with a single bullet through the forehead. Kaan’s wife and partner, Heather, had escaped. And so had Yelena, disappearing with the bag of dough into the Russian parts of Brooklyn.

  *

  Joe didn’t know Yelena’s address. He wasn’t even sure how she spelled her last name. But while it was hard to think of a law she hadn’t broken at some point, she did live by a code, and ten days after that battle, Joe and his grandmother Gladys were settling down to watch Jeopardy! like she did five nights a week, when the doorbell rang.

  “Who’s that?” Gladys asked, checking her watch. Ten minutes to Alex.

  “How do I know?” Joe was washing dishes in the long, narrow kitchen. “Probably one of your cronies.”

  With a sigh, Gladys lowered her recliner and went to the small foyer to peer through the peephole. “Looks more like one of yours,” she called to him, and when Joe came out, Yelena was with her, looking sleek and healthy in expensive-looking dark-blue jeans and a peasant top that let the edges of her ink show. She’d chopped her bangs up a bit and looked well cared for, like she’d been getting enough sleep and water. Even the gauze wrapped around her bicep where the bullet had cut through was fresh and white and somehow chic, like an armband.

  “Hello Yelena.” Joe smiled. “Have you met my grandmother, Gladys?”

  “It’s a pleasure,” Yelena said in her light Russian accent, kissing Gladys on the cheek, “to meet the most important woman in Joe’s life.” She pulled a bottle of vodka and a tin of caviar from her bag and handed them to her. “These are for you.”

  “Ha! Thanks, hon,” she said. “I’ll get some ice.”

  “And this is for you, Joe.” Yelena tossed him a fat envelope.

  “Thanks,” Joe said. “But actually this is for you, too,” he told Gladys, handing her the envelope and taking the bottle. “I’ll go get the ice.” He walked toward the kitchen and Yelena followed.

  “Get a Fresca, too, Joey, while you’re in there,” Gladys called and sat down to count the cash in the envelope.

  Yelena spoke in low tones while Joe got out glasses and ice. “Most of the money was no good. Korean counterfeit. After expenses, it came up to fifteen thousand each, for you, me, and Juno.”

  Joe poured the vodka over the ice. “Za zdorovie,” he said, and they clinked glasses and drank.

  “So you are drinking still, Joe?” she asked.

  Joe refilled their glasses. “I thought you wanted me to drink with you, like the Russian men you knew.”

  She shrugged. “Sure, but they are mostly all dead.” She stroked his forearm, tracing a fat vein. “And this?” she asked.

  “It’s starting,” Gladys yelled from the other room. “Where’s that Fresca?”

  Joe smiled, patting her hand. “You see? I already have a grandma.” He grabbed the Fresca and another glass with ice and went back into the living room, while Yelena followed with the vodka.

  “Just cover the ice, hon,” Gladys instructed as Yelena poured. “I’ll add the Fresca.” The envelope was gone from sight. Gladys’s eyes were glued to the screen, and the familiar theme song played.

  “Come on, let’s go in my room,” Joe said, taking Yelena by the hand. “No talking allowed during Jeopardy!”

  An hour later, lying naked beside each other with the A/C cranked high to dry their sweat, Joe checked his watch, then rolled up to a sitting position, feet on the floor.

  “I have to get to work,” he said.

  “You have a job?” Yelena asked. “I will come with you.”

  Joe smiled. “Not that kind of job. But sure, come if you want.”

  They showered quickly and dressed. And then Joe took her to Club Rendezvous.

  3

  It was Yelena who got into the fight at the club––over Crystal, a half-black, half-Columbian stripper from Philly who was studying accounting during the day—but it was the little white rapper dude who started it. Joe was on duty, more or less, but he was alternating his usual black coffee with the occasional shot sent over by Yelena. Yelena was front and center, at one of the ringside VIP tables, tossing money onto the stage and buying lap dances and ordering rounds of drinks for the waitress and the bartender as well.

  When a beautiful woman walks into a strip club, the staff’s reaction is mixed. On the one hand, the dancers are intrigued, and if the woman is game, excited. It’s fun to dance for someone you actually think is hot for a change, to rub against soft, sweet-scented skin instead of yet another stinky dude. At first the girls tend to flock around and play it up. It’s fun for all concerned. On the other hand, the strippers aren’t there to have fun. They’re there to earn. To them, the hot female customer is like having birthday cake at work: everyone gathers in the conference room for a sugar fix, looking forward to a break from the routine, but that’s not how anyone in the office actually pays the rent. For that you’ve got to get back to your desk and grind. Cake is cake, but a stripper’s bread and butter is the horny but ultimately compliant, ordinary dude, the nerd or workingman who will sit all night buying dances, coughing up twenty after twenty for each three-minute song, then go home, broke and alone but with a smile. No hot girl is going to do that.

  The other seemingly exciting customer who is more trouble than he’s worth is the guy who thinks he’s a player: the celebrity or athlete. He might wave a fat wad of cash around to show off, but since he expects women to fawn over him and is often himself being hosted by various big shots or fans—that is, he is the date—he tends either to be stingy, because he thinks he’s doing the girl a favor by letting her rub her tits in his face, or get out of line, because he assumes the lucky girl can’t wait to get it on with a star like him. He’s also more likely to throw a tantrum and get mean about it when he gets rebuffed.

  That’s exactly what happened with Li’l Whitey. A pint-size white rapper from Long Island, who’d scored a hit recently with his song “Cookies and Cream,” he rolled in to the club with his entourage, which included a pot dealer, a lesser-known rapper, an up-and-coming MMA fighter who called himself Flex, and his bodyguards, two walking sides of beef in tracksuits. After Crystal’s turn on the stage, Li’l Whitey called her over and bought a lap dance. Now strip club protocol is well established: the customer sits still a
nd lets the stripper work. She touches you, but you don’t touch her unless she asks you to or places your hand on the spot of her choice herself. Whitey forgot—or didn’t think the rules applied to him—and placed his hand in the spot Crystal liked least. She jumped up, and when he grabbed her and yanked her back, she slapped him one. Yelena, sitting nearby, saw this situation evolving, and when Whitey’s hand went up to smack Crystal, she moved. In a flash, Whitey’s hand was bent behind his back, wrist sprained, and shoulder on its way to being dislocated.

  The bodyguards grabbed Yelena, who squirmed free, flipping one of them onto the table. Crystal screamed and hit the other one with a bottle. The pot dealer fled since he was holding, and the minor rapper tried to intervene but got accidentally elbowed in the nose by bodyguard number two as he turned to shove Crystal off. And then Joe went to work.

  As a bouncer, Joe’s job was to (1) protect the employees, (2) squash any trouble quickly without disturbing the customers, and, if necessary, (3) remove the troublemakers from the premises, all with a minimum of force. Pissed off at seeing Yelena and Crystal get hit and a few drinks over the line himself, Joe momentarily forgot that last clause about a minimum of force. Rushing into the center of the squabble, he slammed bodyguard one facedown into the ice bucket, kidney punched bodyguard two, and drove a fist into Whitey’s solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him. By now, the bartender, a tall, handsome black guy who was studying acting but had played ball in college, had come over, along with the stocky young Mexican bar back, and with them wrestling one bodyguard and Yelena taking apart the other, Joe yanked Whitey up and steered him toward the exit door, which a waitress quickly opened. The whole bunch spilled outside. That’s when Flex jumped in.

  With a winning record and his first television appearance coming up, Flex considered himself to be a professional athlete not a street fighter. He wasn’t interested in getting hurt or hurting anyone else for free. But getting into clubs and industry events as Whitey’s best pal and having the famous rapper ringside at his matches was a professional matter, and when he saw his lucky charm getting rudely eighty-sixed from the club and tossed onto the sidewalk like trash ready for pickup, he stepped in. As a pro, he also understood right away that no one else there could handle Joe.