Detective Fog and the Mission Pigeon

Chapter 6. "You Going to Tell Me Where Paul Aniston Is?"

November 1, 2015. 

This time Detective Fog did allow herself a reaction; her eyes immediately widened and then she started to laugh and smacked her rocks glass down on the counter.

On second thought she lifted the drink back up and drank. With a shake of her head, of disbelief, she said, "So you're just playing with me. Good to know. You going to tell me where Paul Aniston is?" she asked.

"Probably not. You don't have anything good enough on offer," said Nakos.

"I do," said Detective Fog, "but you'd have to take a gamble. Tell me where Paul's been taken and I'll tell you something much more interesting. Something you'll regret not knowing as early as possible. Come sunrise you'll feel like a headless chicken in the dark if you're the last to know. Besides, what's the big idea, extinguishing a bright talent like Paul Aniston, making him disappear into the bay just because he took a slight bit more than all the other pushers off the top. You need to set an example? Take a hand or something. How about an eye? Don't kill the kid. Am I right? What's got Mena so shaken up that she needs to resort to such harsh and permanent punishment?"

"I'm considering answering that question," said Nakos. "Just not here. Let's continue this conversation outside." He wagged his head toward the back door Detective Fog hadn't known went anywhere.

Cigar Bar had filled right to the brim, standing room only left and that filling up quickly. If they left their stools they would never recover them. It was a crush and squeeze of bodies to get through to that back door and Detective Fog turned to look back over each shoulder as she followed Nakos; hiding her edginess wasn't worth the real risk that a deadly trap was about to snap shut in the form of a pack of mafiosi falling in on her, and step one was to make sure no one followed them outside from inside the bar.

Step two was to get a good look through that door when it opened to make sure it was safe beyond.

The door opened up onto what must have been the smallest patio in the city, and through the door the stone pavement and wooden fence was visible with not much else except a couple of garbage, recycling and compost bins, and a rusty old barbecue. Nakos skipped out into the night and turned around to watch her.

Without a shred of self-consciousness she took him in, and without letting him out of her sight she peeped her head out, hands holding firm on to the doorframe to pull herself back if anyone was waiting out there to murder her. Quickly she peeked to the left, back to center, and then to the right. There was no one else there.

Nakos avoided laughing with difficulty. "Are you packing?" asked Detective Fog.

"Yeah," said Nakos. "You?"

Detective Fog shrugged noncommittally and said, "I don't like guns very much." Then she opened her jacket and tucked into her slacks was a wood-handled Smith & Wesson .38. "I'm going to keep the door open. No one will overhear." She pulled the door most of the way shut and sat down on the sill with her feet on the steps.

"So where's Paul Aniston?" asked Detective Fog. It didn't matter why Nakos was willing to talk about Paul, only that he was. The detective looked relaxed except for her reluctance to blink too often.

Jason Nakos heard the question and let it sit in the night air for thirty seconds while he lit another cigarette. Preoccupying his hands should relax the detective some, he thought, but when the first smoke cloud puffed past his eyes she still sat with her fake calmness, those relaxed muscles that were ready to tense into movement, wide awake eyes in the mind that obviously hadn't imbibed the three drinks in fifteen minutes as she pretended. Plus she pretended she wasn't a good shot, and who would admit to that when a duel could break out any second?