Johnny V and the Razor Read Online Free

”Where’s Nick?”
    Stephen, who was working off his boss’s debt, tried to pull away. “I’m not his secretary.”
    “Find him.” Sloane pulled harder, squeezed. “And don’t take anyone in a back room,” he said. “You’re with me tonight.”
    Sloane went to the bar. Tommy, the bartender, had Canadian whiskey neat waiting. Men made room for Sloane.
    In the packed club, men talked to wait-boys, who offered time in back rooms at five dollars a half hour. A jazz quartet on a low stage roughed up a tune Sloane had heard Ellington’s band play. Up against the back wall, poker tables were full. Muscle was walking between tables, keeping the games friendly.
    Nick came out from the alcove that led to his office and signaled Sloane.
    With an office barely big enough to hold a desk, two men, and two chairs, no one would have guessed Sloane’s brother ran more than half the bootlegging operations in the city. The small room was sideways, like a short hallway. Sloane had told him to set it up like that. If a man came in with a gun, he would have a tough shot unless Nick was facing the door, and he never did.
    Nick was sitting behind his toy-size desk. The green-shaded lamp perched on the corner threw shadows across his narrow face. He looked like the stingiest accountant in the country.
    “You’re late,” he said.
    “Stopped.” Sloane slid into the chair on his side of the desk.
    ”Done?”
    “All but the cops and the pictures.”
    “Witnesses?”
    Sloane slouched down in his chair, something he’d learned to do in grade school when he didn’t want the teacher to see a lie in his eyes. “Think I suddenly got dumb?”
    “Where’s the car?”
    “Dumped.”
    “Someone saw you at Dora’s.” Nick leaned over his desk, palms against the wood. “Said you had a pretty new face with you.”
    Sloane leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, deadly hands hanging down between his legs. “So?”
    Nick pushed his chair back. It scraped the concrete floor. “Nothing,” he said. “Been worried about you. Nobody’s seen you with anyone in months.”
    “Been busy.”
    “Deal was, we get more than half the territory locked down, we get sixty percent of the profit.”
    “And?”
    A slow smile stretched Nick’s face into something that should have been pleasant, but wasn’t. “With Donnelly gone, we have 65% of the territory locked up,” he said.
    Before tonight in Dora’s, before Johnny, Sloane would have cared. As it was, he said, “Donnelly told me where his stash was. Said I could have it if I let him go.”
    Nick twisted his face into something no one would have wanted to see, not in their darkest nightmare. “Where?”
    Sloane told Nick what he’d gotten out of Donnelly before he sent him into the dark for good.
    “Half is yours,” Nick said.
    “You know where to put it.” A twinge of guilt twisted through Sloane’s gut. Nick had never been anything but fair to him.
    Nick went on talking—interest rates, percentages, stock margins—things Sloane had never cared about. Restless, Sloane stretched out his long legs, let his head fall back against the chair. Years ago, he’d given up fighting the urge that always came after a kill, like thunder after lightning. Up in his rooms, he could have had Johnny on the floor, just held him down and taken what he wanted. But he’d fought it, and it was eating him up because he still wanted it.
    “…candles?”
    Silence made Sloane pop his head up and focus on Nick. “What?”
    Sighing, Nick pulled a pack of Lucky Strikes from his pocket, drew a smoke, and lit up. “I said a bad storm’s blowing in. You have candles?”
    “Yeah.” Sloane got to his feet. “Anything else?”
    “No.”
    “Long night,” Sloane said. “See you in the morning.”
    His fingers were brushing the doorknob when Nick said, “Little brother?”
    When Nick said it like that, he was smelling around for trouble. Sloane turned, his heart pounding, his moves slow, easy.