Page 70 of Bourbon & Blood

Ol’ Bennie gave me a dirty look, and I fought not to break it off in his ass about him bein’ a sensitive-ass pussy. He was a small guy, short, but built. Keepin’ himself in fine shape – but the man had one of those little-man complexes. A what do you call it? That short shit from France. Napoleon! He had a Napoleon complex, and that shit got goddamn annoying,fast.

“I was just down at the Ritz, greasin’ some palms and got a hold of their security footage the night your girlfriend’s friend was there.”

“Shit, you got it? Bennie, my man!” Hex slapped him on the back of the cut.

“That’s good work, brother,” I said.

Bennie asked, “Got a laptop around here somewhere?” He held up a flash drive.

“Shit yeah,” Hex said, sliding down off his seat and heading on back to our office. He came back with the slim profile black laptop and handed it over to Bennie who set it up on the bar and unfolding it, switched it on.

He worked at the keys, punching in the password to open the desktop. When it was awake and ready to roll, he plugged that flash drive in.

It had several clips on it – the first in the lobby, the second in the bar, and finally in one of the upper floor hallways.

“Now, let’s just see if that’s that rich feller your boy from last night says he booked the room under,” Hex said, pausing the screen on a good shot of the dude’s face.

He pulled up the web browser and looked up Mr. Daryl Winters out of Shreveport, finding a picture of him and putting it up there next to the window with Maya’s John’s face.

“I’d say it’d take a fuck ton of surgery to make that into this,” Bennie said, clicking back and forth between the two screens, full-sized one over the other, back and forth between the man with Maya and Daryl Winters.

“Take a fuck of a lot more ‘n that to turn a fucker from sixty to thirty,” Hex said.

“Well, we know Cornelius is in it,” I said. “Room was booked on his order.”

“Print that out for me, would yah?” Hex asked Bennie of the closeup screen cap of the dude whose arm Maya was on.

“No problem,” he said and did what was asked, running the laptop back to the office and grabbing the photo for us. He handed it over to Hex who let his eyes rove over it.

“Don’t much like the size of that suitcase with him,” he remarked. I shook my head.

“Me either,” I said. It was a big, checked bag. Probably empty. Perfect size to transport a body in, out of the hotel – no one the wiser.

“To the blood-sucking lawyer’s?” I asked.

“I figure,” Hex said, nodding. With his down-home country-fried accent it came out sounding more like “figger.”

So that’s what we did; Hex, Bennie, an’ me all headin’ on down to the lawyer’s office. We parked where we could find it, meaning a fuckin’ spot in the general chaos and crush of Central Business District traffic. I told Bennie to stay with the bikes and holler if he saw somethin’ we should be concerned about – cops and the like. Never could tell with these crafty bastards if they had some kind of silent alarm or somethin’.

We’d had ol’ Bennie call ahead and fake bein’ somebody interested in an appointment. It was just our luck; Mr. Bryan Cornelius had an opening today, and here we were. Still, I know his ass ain’t expectin’us.

He sat up straighter when we walked into his office, Hex shutting the door behind us as the lawyer swore. “Well, hell, I thought my business was done with you boys when ol’ Ruth died.”

“No such luck,” Hex said without missing a beat. “With any luck, your dealin’ with us today is gon’ be easy as pie.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Bryan Cornelius was a weasel by definition and by looks – a tall, skinny motherfucker with a big nose and close-shaved silvery graying hair. He wasn’t that old lookin’, though. Maybe mid-forties? Which made me wonder just how he was wrapped up with Bashaw.

“A week or so back, you gave the order to one of Bashaw’s campaign lackeys to book a hotel room,” Hex said.

“Did I now?” Cornelius looked smug, leanin’ back in his big office chair with a shitty smile, pushin’ his expensive rimless Oakley glasses up on his big fuckin’ nose.

“You did. Told ‘im to put it under some rich feller’s name from all the way up there in Shreveport.”

“Ah-huh,” Bryan said nonplussed. “You gotta question comin’ in all this? Because, gentlemen, I am expecting an appointment any minute now an—”

“I suggest you shut the fuck up and listen,” I said and Hex gave me a nod when Cornelius did just that – shut his fuckin’ mouth and opened those stupid ears stickin’ off the sides of his head.

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