Hardbingers

1

Jack felt pretty decent as he stepped through the Isher Sports Shop's front door. Livelier physically and lighter mentally than he had in weeks. The clear, bright morning sky and brisk air didn't hurt, but he had to give the credit to yesterday. It had been a tonic. Cost him a few thou, but well worth it.

Back in the game.

He wended his way through Isher's towering, overstuffed shelves where dust collected like snow on a glacier. Probably because the stock rarely moved and never turned over. Abe's real business was conducted from the basement, so he didn't spend much time prettying up the teetering farrago of objects to be struck and objects with which to strike them and protective equipment to protect the strikers from being struck.

He found Abe in his usual spot behind the rear counter.

"Brought you a surprise," he said as he approached.

With a flourish he placed a bag of chips on the scarred wooden counter.

"iVu?" Abe said. "Doritos? What for?"

Abe wore his unfailing attire: black pants and a bulging white half-sleeve shirt. Jack was waiting for the day when one of the buttons popped off. Be cool if a chicken materialized and gobbled it in midair.

"Breakfast."

Abe's eyebrows lifted toward the bare expanse of his upper scalp. His expression shifted between shocked and offended as he placed a pudgy, short-fingered hand over his heart.

"Doritos you call breakfast?"

Jack hid a smile. Time for their ritualistic dance.

"Sure. Breakfast is just the first meal of the day. Break… fast. You break your fast." Jack nodded toward Abe's belly. "Although in your case, fasting might be an alien concept."

Abe shook a finger. "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. French toast is breakfast. An Entenmann's Brownie Crumb Ring is breakfast. A bagel and a schmear is breakfast. Doritos are not breakfast."

"Never know till you try."

Jack held the bag out to him. Abe stared as if it contained decayed human body parts.

"It's open already. A half-eaten bag you bring me?"

Jack had bought it with the intention of opening it here, but he'd started sampling on the way over.

"Not half. Only a quarter or so." He shook the bag. "Come on. One."

Abe took it and read the logo as he pulled out a chip.

"Nu? A 'Wow' Dorito? I've heard of these."

He held the yellow-orange chip between thumb and forefinger, examining it like a philatelist contemplating an addition to his collection.

"They've been around for years," Jack said as he grabbed a couple and crunched them. He reached for the morning's Post. He wanted to check for any news about last night's goings-on downtown.

"Really, Abe, they taste surprisingly like the real thing. I mean, considering they're fat free and all."

Abe made a face. "Fat free, shmat free. Always with the no fat."

"For you, not for me. I don't worry about fat, but we've got to watch out for that sputtering ticker of yours."

"It's not sputtering!" He looked offended again. "It never sputters."

"Yeah, but it will be." Jack reached across the counter and patted the ample belly. "And maybe fat free can shrink this."

Abe looked down at the vast expanse of his white shirt and pointed to the orange smear of Dorito dust left by Jack's fingers.

"Oy, now look what you've done."

"First of the day," Jack said. Abe tended to keep a record of his daily food intake on his shirt. "It'll have company soon enough."

He crushed a broken chip and let the crumbs fall to the counter. A blue-feathered streak appeared and immediately began pecking at them.

"See? Parabellum likes them, and parakeets don't have to worry about bulging waistlines."

Abe shook his head. "I don't know. It says here it contains Olestra."

"Yeah. Instead of fat. That's why they call it 'Wow.'"

"I hear they call it 'Wow' because that's what you say on your many trips to the bathroom later."

Jack gave a dismissive wave. "Trash talk from the food nazis. But even if true, think of it as a bonus: Reduce your cholesterol and cure your constipation problem in one swell foop."

"I don't have a constipation problem."

"And you won't have to worry about one if you eat these."

Abe stared at his chip, then at his pet.

"Oy. Parabellum doesn't have a constipation problem either. Just the opposite already. Now—"

"Stop stalling and try it."

"Well, maybe just one." He shoved the whole chip into his mouth and chewed slowly, thoughtfully. "Not bad." He wiggled his fingers toward the bag. "But I can't give an educated opinion after just one. I'll have to try another."

They shared the bag, crunching as they started in on the papers.

Jack said, "Have you seen anything about three shot-up bodies down in the financial district?"

Abe read every New York paper, plus a few from Washington and Boston.

"I should ask how you know such a thing and the papers don't?"

Jack told him the story from its start in Julio's to its end in Red Hook.

"Such a busy night. No wonder you're Mister Sunshine."

"I've never been Mister Sunshine."

"This is true."

"The thing is, I've got this feeling it's not over with those guys—and I don't mean the dead oxygen wasters."

"Because you don't know their game?"

"Bull's-eye. Being bugged like that creeped me out. Got a way I can keep it from happening again?"

"Just the thing."

He slipped off his stool and stepped into the storage closet behind the counter. Jack heard rummaging noises and a few words he assumed to be Yiddish curses. Then, red-faced and puffing, Abe returned to his stool. He placed something that looked like an undersized radio/cassette player on the counter.

"Here. A TD-seventeen. Not a state-of-the-art sweeper, but just what you need. Detects any RF signal between one and a thousand megahertz."

Jack picked up the little black box, fiddled with the aerial and the sensitivity dial. Looked simple enough.

"Great. Put it on my tab. How come you stock this up here instead of downstairs?"

"Downstairs is crowded enough already. I should stock something legal downstairs?"

Jack thought of something as he stuck the sweeper in his pocket.

"Last night… the little guy called himself a yennasari or something like that. Any idea what he was talking about?"

Abe frowned. "Doesn't ring a bell."

That increased Jack's frustration. He needed some sort of handle on these guys. Abe had a degree in anthropology and a minor in languages. If he didn't know…

"Unless he was using a form of janissary."

"Who can say? What's a janissary?"

"The janissaries were bodyguards of the Turkish sultan, his household troops back in the day of the Ottoman Empire. If I remember correctly, they were started in the fourteenth century. The Turks began conscripting Christian boys from the Balkans, converting them to Islam, and training them as soldiers. These became janissaries."

Jack shook his head. "These guys weren't Turkish. Not even close."

Abe rolled his eyes. "The janissaries were disbanded already. Back in the eighteen hundreds. But it's become a generic term for any sort of elite military force. How come you don't know this?"

"Hey, I'm a dropout, remember? But now it starts to make sense. These guys behaved like a team, were well armed, and the little guy, Zeklos, was devastated that he was being kicked out. Said he had nothing to live for. If you were raised since childhood to be part of a team, and then got kicked out… yeah, you might want to put a bullet through your brain."

"Speak for yourself."

"He also talked about something called emvee being his world. That ring any sort of bell?"

"Emvee?" Abe shook his head. "Could be initials. But M-V initials could stand for anything from motor vehicles to music video to the Maldives to whatever. Oy. Such possibilities. It gives me an ache in the head."

The phone rang. Abe bent to check the caller ID.

"This I have to take."

Jack waved and headed for the door. Things to do.