Phil's on the take.

Phil’s burner phone rang for the twenty seventh time. It has gone to voice mail at least four times now but clearly Jimmy the Scumbag wasn’t going to stop till he finally got ahold of Phil. Phil slowly peeled himself off his bed and walked the three agonizing steps to his dresser to answer the phone.

“You fucking ducking me? You piece of shit, I own you and when I call you fucking answer.” Jimmy bellowed.

“Hi Jimmy.” Phil replied, his voice betraying no emotion at all.

“You fix this shit! I got you on the payroll to handle this shit and you fix it now!” Jimmy screamed at him.

“What shit? Make some sense Jimmy.” Phil said.

“You fucking spic. You listen to me.” Phil hung up on him. Racist slurs got you hung up on even if you were the mob boss that kept Phil living the good life. Phil closed his eyes and leaned back, feeling his back ache as he did it. His phone rang again and he turned it off, Jimmy was useless right now and there was no point in talking to him, but clearly something was up and even if this was supposed to be a day off for Phil he was pretty sure he was going to get called into to the precinct soon enough.

Phil stumbled to the bathroom, took a piss, undressed and hopped in the shower. The shampoo phase of the shower brought more salt and pepper hair falling out and into his hands, soon his bald spot would be far more than the half dollar sized hole it currently was. The shower completed he walked in front of the mirror and took stock of himself. The bags under his brown eyes were still there, it felt like ages since he’d gotten a full night of sleep. His nose was far too big for his face and he was a good fifty pounds overweight and his teeth were the shade of yellow you can only get from a three decade long smoking habit.

“Not looking good for making sixty.” He said to himself as he walked back into the bedroom and started getting dressed. Phil might be a sickly, ugly looking man but he sure as shit had a great selection of suits and he knew how to dress. Today was likely going to be active so a light tan cotton shirt and suit was the choice with a matching pair of loafers. He was adjusting his black and white striped tie as his real phone rang.

“Hello Alice” Phil answered.

“Hello Felipe!” Alice chirped cheerfully. She only ever called him by his given name when she was going to put the screws to him. Given what had happened with Jimmy the Scumbag earlier he was pretty sure the other shoe was about to drop.

“So you ready to make the biggest arrest of your career?” Alice asked him with such insincere joy that Phil wished he could reach through the phone and strangle her.

“And who would that be?” Phil asked.

“Oh you don’t know? You just woke up? You should turn on a TV or check twitter.” Alice told him, the sing-song tone of her voice continued.

Phil walked over to his computer and after a few seconds he was on twitter and his stomach dropped. The hashtag #SammyThePsycho was trending. Sammy was Jimmy’s son and a complete lunatic and it was obvious now that the idiot had fucked up.

“So what did Sammy do?” Phil asked.

“Shot up the Davey Jones. Two wounded one in critical condition. Odds are he was on a drug bender and something set him off. There’s plenty of cell phone video of the final few gunshots and folks running on youtube and we’re processing the security cameras now.” Alice told him.

“So go pick him up.” Phil told her curtly.

“Sammy’s gone running, and since we have you, our resident expert on the Martello crime family handy. I figured you should be the one to go get him.” Alice told him as she hung up. It was an open secret in the LBPD that Phil was on the Martello payroll but Alice was spitting in his face with this demand. Forcing Phil to go deal with Jimmy the Scumbag and ask him to turn over his son was going to be a tough task.

He grabbed his badge and gun and headed out to the Fog night club. Fog was Jimmy the Scumbag’s business front and where he spend most of his time harassing young women. Phil arrived and saw the two armed guards standing in front of the building.

Phil walked up and showed his badge. The men didn’t budge.

“Really motherfucker? We’re going to play this game?” Phil turned toward the security camera. “You stupid fuck, let me in or I let the Street Team run point on finding your fucking kid.” The Street Team was an anti-gang unit who had more than their fair share of shootings in the past few years.

The armed men finally backed down and Phil entered Fog. Seated in the middle of the dance floor was Jimmy the Scumbag and some of his trusted flunkies seated at a table. To look at Jimmy was to hate him, a bloated bald frog of a man with liver spots all over his arms and face. Jimmy had taken over the Martello crime family mostly because nobody else had wanted the job, but that didn’t mean folks liked him running things. He’d survived a car bomb two years ago and a drive by a few months after that.

“How you going to fix this shit?” Jimmy hissed at Phil as Phil walked towards him.

“Fix? What fucking fix you looking for? Your idiot kid shot people on tape. It’s out there, you and all the rest of these assholes should be in a church praying neither of the victims he shot dies or he’s never getting out of prison.”

“If you can’t help me why the fuck do I pay you? Why shouldn’t I kill you right now?” Jimmy snapped.

“Cause I’ve saved a half dozen drug shipments, shipments that kept your little organization tread water till you finally hit it big with the casinos. You need a tip off on an investigation, you get it. You need strings pulled so cops aren’t somewhere so you can wack some fuck, you get it. What you don’t get is the ability to sweep a mass shooting under the rug.” Phil said.

“So what we do?” Jimmy asked.

“Find your idiot kid, have him come in. Buy a few lawyers and a judge and have him plead guilty to everything and odds are he’ll do five years or so and get out.” Phil told him.

“My kid can’t do prison he’s a fucking idiot. He’ll beat up an inmate or a guard or some other dumb shit.” Jimmy pleaded.

“Jimmy.” Phil said as he tapped on the table. “This isn’t even an open and shut case. This is worse than that. Your kid is going down, every lawyer in this town can’t wait to sue you for millions for the injuries to those people your kid shot. The DA has every lawyer on his staff begging for this case so they can throw your kid behind bars and throw away the key and then run for congress promising to be tough on crime. Sammy’s fucked, plain and simple, he’s fucked. Five years in a club fed is the happy ending to this story. The unhappy endings are much worse.” Phil finished.

Jimmy bowed his head. “Can we wait and see if they die before he turns himself in?” he asked.

“You know they sent me here to put the screws to me. I got to have a lead on the kid. You got twelve hours tops, maybe before they rip this town apart looking for him and then I got no promises on if he gets shot or not being taken into custody. Your best bet is to wait eight hours or so and then make a call and start a negotiation with Alice, bullshit with her but keep her in the loop and turn him in within a day. Hopefully it’ll be clear they both are alive by then.” Phil said.

“If they die.” Jimmy started.

“If they die and you try to smuggle him out of the country know you’ll be under a microscope for the rest of your life and fucking nobody’s going to help you. Turn your idiot kid Jimmy. Either way, turn him in.”

Jimmy sighed. His giant mass began shaking as he started to sob. Phil didn’t have time for his misery and he turned and walked out of the nightclub. Phil made it three blocks before he noticed the black sedan that had been tailing him ever since he left the nightclub.

“The fuck you want?” Phil asked the driver.

“Get in the fucking car.” The driver told him.

“Fuck that. I’m not some chump who gets thrown in the back of a car and gets the speech about what a shame it would be if something were to happen to little Susie.” Right as Phil said that he saw the man exiting the back of the sedan and reaching for a gun in his waistband.

Phil’s gun was in his hand in the blink of an eye. The goon slowly pulled his hand away from his piece.

“You were seriously about to draw down on a LBPD detective? Are you really that fucking stupid? I know I don’t look like much, but as you can see my draw is pure and I’m really good at hitting center mass at target practice. Of course right now we’re at point blank range here so I can close my eyes and still rip you full of holes. I’ve only ever killed one man in the line of duty in fourteen years, so exactly why did you go and try to make me double my total?” Phil said.

“This shooting happened on Roger Bosco’s turf.” The goon said.

“None of the Bosco Cartel got shot, it was a coked up idiot making a mistake.” Phil said.

“A mistake that made the Davey Jones lose tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars as your police shutdown our gaming area to investigate the shooting.” The goon said.

“He write the speech out for you? You fucking kidding me? If Bosco wants to start a gang war then that’s fine but to bullshit me that it’s over Sammy’s little hissy fit is a bit much.” Phil told him.

“Well maybe if Sammy was given to us we’d think about not doing something so violent.” The goon told him.

“Get the fuck back in the car.” Phil told him and the goon got back in the car. After a few moments the car drove away. Phil put his gun away and sighed, this was going to be a shit storm and he was dead in the middle of it.