3 the Hard Way

THE EXTRACTORS

A McBleak heist story

I’m doing God’s work.

—Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein

[The uproar over bonuses] was intended to stir public anger, to get everybody out there with their pitch forks and their hangman nooses, and all that—sort of like what we did in the Deep South. And I think it was just as bad and just as wrong.

—AIG CEO Robert Benmosche

I’m a motherfucker. I’m a bad guy sometimes.

—Mike Tyson

CHAPTER ONE

Malcolm Cavanaugh Bleekston hung upside down. He was suspended by three thin steel cables connected to a belt rigging buckled around his waist. Like a mutant bat, Bleekston hovered before a heavy floor model safe, a Mosler, circa the 1920s. It was five feet tall and more than two feet wide. The safe was case hardened, and its box was made of five-inch thick forged iron walls. Slowly, methodically, his fingers manipulated the dial of the combination lock. Magnetically attached to the face of the safe near the dial was a flat, rectangular device that on first glance might be mistaken for an iPhone. A wire led from the object and split into inserted ear buds.

The gadget attached to the safe was a kind of sonar instrument. Like an electronic stethoscope, the device amplified metallic clicks from within the iron box. Bleekston listened for contact points, as when he reached a notch in the series of wheels in the lock mechanism. He listened for a certain set of sounds as he worked the dial in practiced increments. Being upside down didn’t enhance the experience and was, in fact, a challenge to concentration given the blood flowing to his head. That was the point of the exercise, to see if he could ignore the distraction of being in an awkward position yet crack the safe.

On a nearby end table, his actual iPhone vibrated, and he was pretty certain he knew who it was. He’d return Bunny’s call when he was done—if he got done. Shutting his eyes, fighting a sensation of lightheadedness, he moved the dial back then forward again by a millimeter. There. A wheel notched into place. That was number three of the seven-wheeled lock. He opened his eyes and removed the pencil he’d clamped between his teeth. He made a notation on a piece of cardboard taped to his wrist of which number he’d stopped the dial on then continued. The fourth notch was easy to locate, but five seemed to elude him for interminable minutes. In his practice lab, that didn’t matter so much, if you overlooked the hanging upside down part, but in a practical environment, time was the enemy.

Bleekston re-focused, shutting down discomfort and any other sensation save for being in this moment and applying his knowledge. To untrained ears, the sounds from within the safe could easily be heard to be the same, with only slight variations in pitch and intensity. But to a safecracker worth the moniker, each sound was distinct, one from the other. A pin dropping into place versus that pin merely scraping along metal, the turning of gears at the further end of the spindle, each had its own sound characteristic sound and from experience, Bleekston knew them intimately. He derived the fifth alignment. After making a note of the dial position, he continued.

While his capillaries continued to expand inside his head from hanging upside down, Bleekston commanded himself to tune in, embodying the analogy that his receiver was drifting, becoming static-filled. He must have clarity. It took another eight minutes, but he got the next number. Then the next and swaying slightly, metering his breathing to compensate for the blackness edging his brain, he blew a stream of warm air from his lungs as he heard the tumbler notch again. One left. But he was feeling too woozy, more inclined to simply keep his eyes closed and go to sleep, let the peace that only the envelope of darkness could grant take him away. Breathe in and breathe out. His arms went slack, and as if drained of blood and fluids, he remained unmoving, swaying only slightly on his tether. How inviting it was to remain like this forever.

Damn that, he muttered, rousing. He took in lungfuls of air to momentarily loosen the bands tightening around the perimeter of his skull. Shaking his head briefly, Bleekston bore down, gritting his teeth and forcing his eyes to focus. At first, he missed it, but something told him he should reverse the dial. He did so and heard the sound, or at least he hoped he did. Was he getting too loopy? Did he imagine the wheel dropping into its notch because he was running out of time to remain conscious? He smiled thinly.

Don’t over-think and therefore defeat yourself, son. Any lock inherently has its flaws as, by definition, it’s meant to be opened by key or by combination, had been one among several admonishments from an old box man he’s trained with in the past. His observation was true for mechanical and electronic locks—though his specialty, given the time period he operated in, was mostly the former and not the latter.

Bleekston held his breath and stilled his body inside and out. He turned the dial in micro movements of its diameter. There it was. It hadn’t been wishful projecting or hallucinating. He tried the combination he’d derived and heard the click of the lock being released. He then raised himself on the cable, doing a sit up in mid-air. He paused for several moments, his torso in an upright position while his head cleared. He then unhooked and put his feet on the floor. Bleekston turned the latch on the safe and opened the heavy door on sufficiently oiled hinges. A satisfied smile creased his face.

He turned away and on the end table, retrieved his phone, and after twisting off the cap of the Double Six vitamin water bottle, he took a healthy gulp. Tapping the phone’s screen, he checked the text message from Charles Bunny Sawyer. It read: McBleak, Lady M invited me to tea this afternoon to discuss the re-do of her living room and study. Will take plenty of pics. Out.

Bleekston, sometimes called M.C. Bleak but mostly now referred to as McBleak by his friends and those not so inclined to like him, disposed of the message. He, Bunny, and less than a handful of others of a rigidly proscribed cadre used encrypted phones and switched them out regularly, but they left as little as possible to chance or discovery. Some within the grouping only knew one or two others in the circle while McBleak was the only one to know them all. He realized this was both a strength and a weakness. But there was no getting around the need for someone to have an understanding of the totality, of who was what. For it was certainly the case that in the past, and no doubt in the future, he’d have to be able to coordinate one or more of these people in the execution of a specific strategy.

The shower he took invigorated the sinewy-built, over six-foot man. He then toweled off in the compact, unadorned living quarters portion of the two-story building. Constructed in the early 1920s like the safe, the red-brick structure had several incarnations from the Anapos hydrant and sewer pipe factory to its last use as the headquarters of a high tech start-up in the mid part of this century. That company of tatted and pierced twenty-something vegetarians had touted the next big thing in apps. The enterprise’s two principals, one of them barely past thirty, were already veterans of past successful trendy ventures.

For months, the effort attracted a lot of favorable tweets and postings, garnering heady anticipation. Given the internet has seemingly induced mass attention deficit disorder among the populace, when the start-up faltered, when the app quickly earned the rep among those who are followed on social media of being liked but not loved, the company’s days were numbered. It was then on to the next trendy thing for all concerned.

Through one of his shell corporations, McBleak had purchased the vacant building for less than what the owner had wanted. At that point though, there were little prospects for renting out the space again and the owner, an older woman who’d inherited the property, was tired of the hassles being a landlady. Housed in the facility were a variety of specialized tools for overcoming security measures, monitoring equipment to various mechanical and electronic locks. There were also a number of old-fashioned safes that McBleak had restored. For his practice session, the combination of the Mosler had been reset by his friend and cohort, Bunny Sawyer.

Dressed in stylish casual clothes, McBleak exited the unmarked building via a steel side door. His iPhone, the other one for his straight transactions, sounded. He answered the call from Vionetta Vickers.

What up, Big V? She was ten years his senior.

I’m reminding you about your lunch at the Strathmore’s Lanceford Grill with Garner Woodward.

You think I’d blow that off? He walked toward his car, beeping off the alarm.

It’s important, and there are times that what you consider a priority can be, shall we say, unconventional when it comes to business and the intricacies therein.

What would my world be without you?

I often ask myself that.

He chuckled. Did the report come in about Daystar?

On your desk.

Excellent. See you a little later.

Of course.

McBleak was behind the wheel of his late model Cadillac, an old man’s choice for a luxury car, his current girlfriend Nita Van Gundy had remarked.

I’m an old-fashioned sort, he’d answered.

She’d regarded him for a moment, pausing before she said, Yes, you are.

Traffic wasn’t bad getting from the red-bricked building in the industrial section to the Strathmore, a hotel located in the gentrified Queen’s Landing area near the water. After leaving his car at the valet, he entered and made his way to the elevator. Before he reached the bank of them, he was intercepted.

Before you see Garner, let me have a quick word with you, Malcolm. The middle-aged man talking was beefy. Though his suit was expensive, it looked ruffled and misshapen on his heavy, hunched over frame.

We’ve been over this, Roger, McBleak said.

The other man put up his hands, signaling stop or surrender. Just hear me out.

Roger, you know full well this is not my doing. Every day these kinds of maneuvers happen. And it’s not like you won’t benefit.

That’s not the point, and you know it. People will lose their jobs when this shakes out.

People were already losing their jobs there. This measure salvages what’s left.

Roger Meredith stuck a finger at the other man. Shit, McBleak, you were an early investor. You believed in me and the company, then. Why not let me see if I can turn this around?

It’s too late.

Meredith’s jaw muscles bunched, and he looked ready to explode at the younger man. Instead, he said in a calm tone, A month, give me a month.

McBleak gazed at him evenly. I’ll see, but I wouldn’t bet the house on it.

A hard chuckle escaped his throat. I hardly have anything left to bet with. Just my name and what I hoped was left of my goodwill.

Be well, Roger.

Yeah.

The heavyset man stalked away. A poker-faced McBleak rode the elevator to the top floor where the restaurant was. He spotted Garner Woodward at a table that commanded a view of the boardwalk and water beyond.

Good to see you, Woodward said, shaking McBleak’s hand. He was in his early fifties, fit and tanned naturally from the tennis he played with zeal and intensity.

McBleak returned pleasantries and sat opposite. Did Roger find you?

Yes, unfortunately.

The waiter was there, and McBleak ordered an Arnold Palmer. The server departed.

Woodward shook his head slightly. I blew him off but saw him doing his best to hide near the elevators to ambush you when you came in. He hunched a shoulder. I suppose if I was in his position, I’d do what I could to save my company.

McBleak considered that Woodward would throw cripples and blind orphans under the wheels if it meant furthering his interests. Any firm to him was judged in limited ways, it was either in the black or in the red.

He said, I hear you. What’s good here?

They caught up briefly, ordered their meals, and began discussing the reason for their lunch meeting. The matter they discussed was a forced buyout of Roger Meredith’s outfit, Tynsadine, an aerospace instruments package manufacturer. Outsourcing had dried up several long-standing accounts but in the works had been a possible lucrative contract with a private space exploration company started by one of the dot com billionaires. Unfortunately for Meredith, a competitor had been chosen.

Woodward had the ahi tuna salad, and McBleak had an open-faced steak sandwich.

To be your age again and eat like that, his lunch companion opined.

You stay in shape pushing those wheelbarrows of money to the bank, Garner.

Woodward smiled thinly and dabbed at his mouth with his cloth napkin. We agree then, on the price for the stock?

I’m in sync with the rest of the board. McBleak was not only an early investor in Tynsadine, he’d recently returned to the small board after being off of it for several years. Ironically, he’d been enticed back by Roger Meredith to help save his sinking company. Instead, McBleak had worked behind the scenes to make sure the relatively modest concern would attract the attention of the shark Garner Woodward. Bringing him this deal would demonstrate to Woodward he was an earner, setting him in good. For McBleak intended to steal a lot of money from this man within the next two weeks—right in front of his eyes.

CHAPTER TWO

Money is such a bother, Nita Van Gundy said as she got out of bed, stretching her lithe, muscular body and yawning.

Only because you got some, baby.

She put fists on her hips and cocked her head slightly.

I don’t see Hegel or Marx on your shelf, bud. She stood clad only in lacy women’s boxers patterned with little red hearts.

There’s one by Krugman, McBleak allowed.

I bought you that book. And the one by Paulo Freire. Two, in fact.

Oh yeah. I should try reading them one day, huh?

Dickhead. She chuckled and leaned down to kiss him. She then straightened up and crossed the floor of her apartment to the bathroom.

Rubbing his unshaven face, McBleak sat up in bed. He took a colorful annual report off the nightstand and began leafing through it. The report was issued by the Critical Mass Initiative, part of the Van Gundy Family Fund. Nita Van Gundy was the executive director of the Initiative. While her family’s fund was a staid institution that gave to the likes of the chamber music society and seeing eye dog providers, her wing granted monies for community organizing and social change efforts in hardscrabble areas of several counties. She did not sit behind her desk reading applications but was frequently in the field, meeting with groups from reformed gang bangers to transgender, pink hair coiffed, environmentalists.

Returning from the bathroom, Van Gundy noted McBleak reading through his report. He looked up at her, and there was a faraway look in his eyes. He blinked, and it was gone. He closed the bound pages and placed it back on the nightstand. She sat on the bed near him.

Hungry? She said.

Only for you. He cupped one of her breasts, the edge of his thumb working back and forth across the areola.

What a charmer, she said, letting her hand slide up his leg under the comforter until it stopped between his thighs.

Afterward, they showered separately, dressed, and went down into the street. They’d decided on the Kojaku Korean-Mexican fusion lunch truck. This was actually made up of three trucks that staked out different locations in the city during the day. The trio was around for the after club goers in the early morning hours. Van Gundy had checked the Kojaku twitter feed. She confirmed, as the rolling restaurant maintained a daily schedule on their website, that one of their trucks would be nearby in the early afternoon.

Walking along, McBleak said, Are you getting burned out, Nita? He was picking up the thread of their conversation before they allowed themselves to get distracted.

It’s not that. But sometimes I feel like a cop or social worker. I see all these injustices around me, and the best I can do is apply a Band-Aid. That’s hardly getting to the root of the problem.

You’re funding clean and sober addicts venturing into the projects to keep the peace among their homies, tenant rights groups, and what have you. I mean that’s frontline, right? They came to an intersection and waited for the light to cycle back to green.

No doubt. But the rock seems to be getting bigger as do the mountains. The light changed, and the two stepped into the intersection.

McBleak said, What do you suggest? Jailing the Wall Streeters like your lefty fellow travelers want will be a visceral thrill. But then what?

Confiscate their wealth.

I don’t need to remind you that some of that liberal guilt and wealth funds the Initiative—substantially. Van Gundy and McBleak had met five months ago at a salon-type event that Critical Mass had put on to showcase a few of their recipients to the well-heeled.

Ain’t that the truth?

So? he pressed. What’s the answer? They turned a corner toward their destination.

That, like it or not, empirical conditions dictate reform not revolution, as my mom would say. Her mother had been part of the anti-war and then Woman’s Movement in the ’70s. You would think the excess of the bankers would be something that united the left and the so-called anti big government right, but the Teabaggers really just want to be rich too. They don’t want to handicap their chances.

The American Dream is that any of us can achieve.

You trying to be ironic, McBleak?

Me? he smiled.

Naw, not you.

They both laughed. The truck was stationed on the side of the art museum. Once they got their orders of bulgobi short-rib tacos and a kimchi and carne asada quesadilla, they sat and began eating in the rest area of the museum outfitted with purposefully retro ’60s designed tables and benches.

McBleak swallowed his food and asked, Are you still in communication with that group you featured in the annual report? The one on the north side in the Bellanoche section? They made some noise recently and got that oil refinery plant closed.

You mean the Sutter Community Improvement Association?

That’s them, he said.

Sure. In fact, I’m going out there to a meeting next week. They’re considering running a couple of candidates for the city council race coming up next year. Her brow furrowed for a moment, and she said, Why do they interest you?

Steve? said a man who’d walked over to the couple.

McBleak swiveled his body around a quarter. The newcomer was in slacks and a light blue dress shirt complemented by a burgundy-colored tie. He smiled. Cedar Rapids, about four years ago? The Daystar convention at the Marriot? He chuckled like they’d shared an outlandish experience. Brad, Brad Wilburs.

No, sorry, McBleak said. My name’s not Steve.

The smile got thinner on the other man’s face but didn’t go away. Oh, come on. I recognize that voice. You’re such a kidder. He shook a finger. In fact, I tried e-mailing you a couple of times after that, only they bounced back.

Amigo, I’m telling you, I’m not this guy you think I am, McBleak said pleasantly. He was aware that Van Gundy was staring at him and the stranger.

The other man’s smile finally evaporated, and he held out a hand, spreading his fingers. Sorry to bother you. But you’ve got a twin running around out there.

Don’t we all. McBleak manufactured a smile, turning back to the table. Brad Wilburs walked back to his table on the plaza where two other men sat and ate as well.

Funny, huh? he said, hunching. That ever happen to you?

Van Gundy said, Sure. It seemed she was going to continue talking but didn’t. They both went on with their lunch quietly until McBleak spoke again.

You’d asked me about the Sutter folks?

She nodded, her mouth full.

There’s been talk, as you know, of development out there, among the prospects is an Axinon bottling plant.

Thank you for getting me in to see their community relations person, she said. They’re interested in our business seed fund. McBleak was an investor in the designer water label that produced the popular Double Six brand among others.

I expect the usual payment.

She touched his hand. Of course.

I was wondering about the level of pushback from the folks in the area or was this seen as a jobs incubator?

Creators versus takers, she quipped. This an investment angle you’re investigating, more than just your money in Axinon?

The single most powerful asset we all have is our mind. If it is trained well, it can create enormous wealth in what seems to be an instant.

She snorted. That’s horseshit from one of those get rich quick books you don’t read.

I’m a capitalist, my darling. But your influence on me has tempered my natural rapaciousness.

She chewed, shading her eyes from the now shifted sunlight. Has it now?

You sound doubtful, he teased, enjoying his taco.

Throatily, she whispered, I figure you just say that to get in my pants.

How shallow of me.

Uh-huh. She leaned over and gave him a greasy smack. How do you decide what to invest in, McBleak?

My gut.

She twisted her lips regarding him. Let me know when you want to talk to my girl. She’s the best.

Of course, darling.

Later, McBleak drove the Cadillac out to the north side. A Best of Sam Cooke CD played softly on the sound system. Nita Van Gundy was curious about the source of his funds and, by extension, how he’d acquired them. Bringing up her money manager at lunch wasn’t the first time she’d done so.

In her social and material bracket, it was considered impolite to ask friends and acquaintances how they’d made their money if they didn’t volunteer the information. Typically those who came from inherited wealth like her assumed if you attended certain functions and dressed a certain way, then you were like them. The money was just there and every once in a while a lawyer or some dour-faced money manager showed up to reprimand you for your spendthrift ways. Or maybe, like a Kardashian, you simply assumed it was a given you got paid to be at an event or club to bestow on it the so now imprimatur just because of being you.

But Van Gundy was not a vapid or self-absorbed woman. She was not a shopaholic or worried about what was a trending restaurant and what was this week’s old news. She’d long ago discovered that all real money, money that mattered, was not achieved without someone, usually many nameless someones, paying the price. In her case, her family fortune were made the old-fashioned way, off the sweat of workers in her robber baron forefathers’ steel and lumber mills who had invested in the Central Pacific railroad during the transcontinental expansion.

As Cooke sang Bring It on Home to Me, McBleak reflected on the fact that he’d tried to make a go of it more than once with a young heiress into her looks and shoes and that little island off the coast of Greece that her friends told her was just the most wondrous place for a getaway. They were certainly open and adventurous in terms of sexual matters but hardly kept up with current events beyond scrolling past headlines on their iPhones.

He understood when he first met Van Gundy and those familiar stirrings welled in him, that she was going to be a challenge. Not in a high-maintenance, cater to her capricious whims way. But a smart, insightful woman who, in the mid-morning, could be speaking at a brunch full of the blue-veined, iron-willed matrons and at night, be meeting with cholos and their abuelas in the barrio shouldn’t be taken for granted. He’d noted her reaction to the man at lunch. He’d kept the proper questioning look on his face, but he wondered, had she sensed his unease beneath the façade he hoped he’d maintained?

Yet, that’s what heightened his relationship with her, he concluded as he re-checked his direction on the onscreen map. Could he keep his secrets with someone like her? He almost scoffed aloud. Prisons and graveyards were full of would-be clever bastards. The trick was to be able to do your crime and not only not be caught, but pull off the score without making it look like you were doing anything out of sort. Wasn’t that the lesson from the banksters Van Gundy railed about? Misdirect. Point the suspicions elsewhere. If that didn’t work, be ready to walk away. But he was established here. He liked living the life of the pampered insofar as outward appearances went.

McBleak parked his car at a meter and exited along a commercial street of local business of the shoe repair, car stereo installation, and nail salon variety. The Bellanoche section of the north side was full of aging buildings and lampposts stripped for the copper wiring. Once home to a heavy Italian immigrant influx from nearly a century ago, in the 1980s, it had seen the influx of immigrants and the undocumented from Central America and Mexico.

Nowadays, there was a small but growing presence of hipster artists who, because of cheap rent and an edgy vibe, had established a beachhead. Unfortunately the avant-garde were too often the advance scouts for the deep pocket set hungry to swoop in and landscape the real estate with name brand stores charging quadruple the rents.

He walked along and after two more blocks, took a left that brought him to a stretch where there were boarded up structures across from a grassy field that contained a pile some forty feet high of concrete, wood, and broken porcelain fixtures. Once, various gauges of plumbing pipes had stuck out of the pile like errant antennas inserted to communicate with other galaxies. But the pipes had long been liberated by addicts and the homeless for the dollars the lead and copper they were made of could bring at the recycler.

Beyond the field were residential housing that if the proposed development happened, would be gone too. He began to walk toward a corner of the vast expanse when he heard the panting of a dog behind him. He turned to see a bleary-eyed individual in over-sized hoopster shorts and an athletic-T walking a mixed breed dog on a leash. Whatever else composed the dog’s ancestry, its pit bull lineage was acutely evident to McBleak.

CHAPTER THREE

Whatzup, homes? the dog’s owner said. Whatchu doin’ around here? There were tattoos stretching from his left bicep, flowing across that side of his chest up his neck and ending under his ear.

Sightseeing.

Yeah? He and his animal came closer. The dog’s face was impassive, his emotional state inscrutable as to its disposition.

McBleak moved so as to be in three-quarter profile to the dog’s owner.

You ain’t a cop, he concluded. Them shoes are too good for a po-po, even vice, his new acquaintance observed. He squinted as if seeking to shake off the effects of the beer reeking from him. Suddenly, he blurted, Brunoris. Them some Brunoris.

They were.

Look about my size too. He grinned at McBleak then looked at the dog then back to him. Am I right?

What about this? McBleak had withdrawn a fountain pen from his jacket’s inside pocket. He held it by its tip for the other man to see. The cap and barrel were finished in silver filigree. This is a Waterman, an antique in fact. I restore them. It involves close work, precision. Steady hands, clarity and focus.

Man and dog gazed at the pen. The owner asked, It’s worth something?

McBleak unscrewed the cap and removed it, exposing the nib. Probably fetch three or four thousand at auction. This one was said to belong to Dorothy Parker.

The other one sneered. Probably go good with them shoes.

Before he could issue a command to his dog to lunge, McBleak struck. He jabbed the tip of the pen in the tattooed man’s neck and simultaneously, got his opposite arm around his neck. The dog was barking and snarling but was still held on the leash. McBleak had also thrown himself and his temporary prisoner backward against a chain link fence, cutting off a rear attack by the dog, he hoped.

If you don’t want me to gash open your neck, homes, tell your dog to be cool. Blood trickled onto McBleak’s hand and the Waterman. The nib had broken the skin, and he worked his hand back and forth, digging it into the flesh.

Motherfuckah.

Now that we’ve determined my preferences, what about yours? The dog was becoming more excited. McBleak banked on the notion that her owner, he’d noted it was a she, held on for two reasons. The dog was his possible savior, but the state it was working itself into, it might bite and maul him trying to get at McBleak. The canine wasn’t sure what all was happening but sensed its master’s discomfort and might act unpredictable given its agitation. McBleak kept pressure around his captive’s neck, letting him know he intended to keep him between his body and those teeth.

I bet you’re calculating that if your dog can get at my legs, I’ll have to let the pen go. He ground the pen more, eliciting a grunt. But you really want to take that chance?

Fuck you.

You die first. He jerked his hand up, enlarging the gash in the tatted man’s neck, causing a greater trickle of blood.

Wait, wait, the dog man said, panic in his voice.

Calmly McBleak said, Tell your dog to stand the fuck down.

She won’t—

You deaf all of a sudden? McBleak said, cutting him off, twisting the pen again

Okay, shit, take it easy.

You better sell it.

The tatted man took a breath and said, Pearl. It’s okay, girl. Everything’s alright. We’re just playing, okay?

Pearl, the pit bull mix, wasn’t buying it. She kept barking and darted back and forth, snapping at her owner’s feet and lower legs. Soon, she wouldn’t be listening to any commands.

Pearlie, he said, louder, more forceful. Pearl, you better obey me, or you know what you’ll get.

The dog kept moving about, but there was hesitation on her face. Her brows inclined upward like dogs do when questioning something.

Pearlieee, he repeated, drawing out her name. Be good. It’s okay, girl. Sit, girl, sit.

The dog stopped, panting rapidly, its chest expanding and contracting.

Let me pat her, he said.

I’m not letting you go, McBleak vowed.

She wants love, man, or she might go off again.

Now, McBleak had to weigh his options. Fine, he finally said. He relaxed his arm around the man’s throat. The tatted man bent to his dog to pat and rub her boney head. To keep his pen pressed in place, this necessitated McBleak moving to the side and bending over too. He guessed the other man would simply pull away and fall to the ground while sic’ing Pearl on him.

McBleak stuck the pen in the dog man’s ear. I’ll shove it in as far as it’ll go if you get creative.

Just be cool, man, he said. The fuck, you some kinda Navy SEAL or some shit like that?

Stand up, McBleak commanded.

He did so, and McBleak quickly searched him. He found a good-sized folding knife in the front pocket and took it out. He also removed the pen from the man’s ear cavity. The knife was down at his side, the blade out. Blood clotted on the cuffs of his shirt and coat sleeve.

McBleak said, You and Pearl stroll the fuck away. If you put her on me, I’ll slice her so that she never walks again. Now, understand, I like dogs. He paused, adding, You, I don’t. I finish with Pearlie, I’m coming after you. We clear?

Yeah.

Good. McBleak waited.

The other man regarded him for several moments, trying to process this seemingly out-of-place dude in his uptown suit, probably some kind of real estate speculator come to the ’hood, getting all hard