Places to go, people to see...
For a few minutes, digging fruitlessly in the Mustang's boot, Bill thinks he's left his fucking shoulder holster in the flat. Which would be just his bloody luck. The first time he's actually needed it in ages, and he can't lay his hands on the bastarding thing.
He manages a fairly impressive string of curses before he locates it, stuffed into a maroon gym bag that smells like every locker room Bill has ever been in: chemical cleaner and sweat socks. He shrugs off his jacket and pushes his arms through the straps. It takes him a few minutes to get the bloody thing sorted out, which is pretty fucking funny considering he'd worn it for so long (up to a few months ago) that it's still habit to reach for it when he gets dressed every morning.
Also in the gym bag are a wadded up pair of blue jeans, a hopelessly wrinkled (and smelly) t-shirt, a pair of socks, and a small necessities kit. Under all of that are two boxes of ammo and two loaded clips.
Bill retrieves his service weapon from its case under the spare tire, checks to be sure it's safe, and secures it in the shoulder holster. He stuffs the case in the gym bag, and both spare clips into his jacket pocket.
He thinks it's vaguely depressing how little of himself he has left in the Mustang, considering how long it's been his. He isn't sure what he'll do with the crap that he does carry around in it, however. He could stow it at the studio, or at Orlando's, he supposes, but he doesn't actually want the car anywhere near either place.
He isn't quite ready to give it up yet, but Susan is dead right about it being too fucking distinctive. He has momentary visions of what it might be replaced with -- one of narc's blatant stalker-vans, or maybe a slick-topped Crown Vic (heaven fucking forbid) with thirty bloody antennae bristling from the trunk and roof -- and sighs. Well fuck. It's never really been his car, anyhow. Get the fuck over it, Boyd.
He gazes into the boot for several seconds, pondering the Kevlar vest wedged beneath the laptop case. Eventually, he slams the boot and briefly hooks his fingertips under the edge, yanking to be sure it caught. He shrugs his jacket on, and just stands there for several seconds, thinking.
He shouldn't go to Keira's. He doesn't really want the car there, either. He's not even certain that she's aware that he knows where she lives. Although that hardly matters. If he'd accepted her earlier invitation, she'd know he knows by now.
But he can't go back to his flat, obviously. Susan's voice had indicated that very clearly, even if her words had been more judicious.
And once he takes care of business, he's going to need somewhere to bloody go. He knows better than to trust hotels, and he's not interested in safe houses that can double as holding facilities. And Orlando's is out of the question; Bill can't take Orlando looking at him with that fucked up amalgam of fear and awe and trust and love. Not tonight, and never mind that Orlando is probably the person best equipped to deal with Bill as he will inevitably be once he's slipped, if only briefly, back into MacKinnon. That fact only illustrates (pathetically) the fact that Bill's choices are exceedingly limited.
How fucked up is he, exactly, if Orlando is the only person who might understand what's going on with him. Bill snorts, grimly amused at the notion.
No matter what Susan thinks, he understands that now is the only time to go looking for information, whether it's "beyond stupid" or not.
There is a very distinct pattern to the way information travels in the lowest echelons of Dominguez's organization. It wafts downward like smoke, hazy and ephemeral and highly susceptible to interpretation. Tonight, the riff-raff will be buzzing with excitement and fear, glad to be alive (glad it hadn't been them), and terrified at the same time. Because they all understand that it might be them next time. They'd be sneering at the stupidity of their dead, bottom-feeding compatriots from one side of their mouths and railing against Dominguez's power over them from the other. And looking over their shoulders the whole time.
Right now, all they have is rumor and speculation.
By tomorrow, someone would have been sent 'round to lay out the "official word" -- and to "politely" remind them to shut their fucking gobs. Bill had performed that sort of public relations gig himself, as MacKinnon, and if he waits until that has been done, he'll get less information, or even no information.
Not acceptable.
The time to go looking for answers is now, while they're afraid and angry, before they've been told anything "official."
If he can do it before Dominguez spins it his own way, then Bill can make his version of things the standard against which every other version is measured.
Bill hadn't had shite to do with the deaths of those two idiots, but that doesn't matter. He's willing to let them think whatever they like, provided it jibes with his agenda, and he understands quite clearly how to take grapevine gossip and propaganda and fashion it into something like myth-based-on-fact. It has the added benefit of potentially eliminating Bill's dead-man-walking stigma. It's all a matter of telling it as close to the truth as will stand up under moderate scrutiny, and if he does it right, he might be able to make himself -- at least temporarily -- untouchable.
It helps that MacKinnon had been untouchable. No matter what name he goes by now, these people remember him as MacKinnon, that is who Bill will always be to them, and MacKinnon is a badass. All he has to do is reiterate that, demonstrate his willingness to continue in that vein, and whether it's real or feigned (and he doesn't know for sure himself), they'll accept it, because it will feel like business as usual to them.
All he needs to do is convince one moderately sized group (information spreads like wildfire through the creatures dangling at the bottom of the food chain) that he isn't less of a threat, isn't less formidable, because of his badge.
All in all, demonstrating a marked lack of concern for consequences isn't going to be that difficult for Bill to do. He thinks that's probably a bad sign, but he doesn't have time to really think about it now.
So no Kevlar -- MacKinnon would never -- and no pulled punches. Still having the Mustang (in all it's distinctive glory) is a plus, as well. It's recognizably Bill's (or MacKinnon's, which boils down to the same thing), and beats he hell out of trying to hail a taxi. Especially if he has to leave quickly, which won't happen if things go the way Bill intends, but which certainly could happen.
Most anything could happen in the course of the next couple of hours.
**
It only takes him ten minutes or so to take a few precautions. He's familiar with the way people act when they're cornered, and he doesn't have time to track anyone down. Once things warm up, it's fairly important that most of the people present hang around for the show.
Even if it does create a potential fire hazard.
**
He's glad not to see Rings or J.J.
He doesn't want to fuck up the first, and J.J. would've been risky. It's not so much that Bill has a problem with the whole gender thing; his general policy of not beating the crap out of females notwithstanding (and Bill isn't prepared to testify in court that J.J. even counts as a woman, he suspects she's more closely related to reptiles than human beings), J.J. richly deserves to have her fucking nose broken. But J.J. is adept at using her sex to her advantage, and she might have had the balls to actually file a fucking report with the PD if Bill had been forced get physical with her. Which would be very bad.
The low grumble of the crowd, interspersed with burst of raucous hoots and laughter, kicks up when Bill walks in. By the time he's scanned the place for familiar faces (many), though, it's settled back down to a low roar.
This isn't one of Dominguez's fucking "private" parties or flashy dance clubs, and he can sweep the entire expanse of the room quickly enough to get a firm idea of how many people he's likely to have to watch out for within the first ten seconds. No one immediately gets up to leave (some of them pissed enough to be brave, some of them just curious enough to choose to stay), so Bill picks someone (Flack Daniels -- he likely thinks he's fucking funny -- small time meth but primarily deals E, had carried a revolver jammed into the back of his jeans the last time Bill had interacted with him, likely to have a knife on him somewhere, one of Burelle's flunkies, moderately bright and left handed, if Bill's memory serves him correctly) and strolls casually over.
The look on Flack's face as Bill approaches is totally justified. They've had run-ins before, and Flack had been one of Burelle's little fuckwits. Bill doesn't really hold it against him. It's in the nature of people like Flack to attach themselves to more powerful people, and Flack had simply managed to hook himself up with someone Bill loathed.
He really doesn't hold it against Flack, but he's disappointed when Flack stands and heads toward the back. There's a fire exit back there, and unless Flack has experienced a sudden and quite pressing need to take a piss in the alley out back, he's decided that discretion is the better part of valor. Not that it will do him any good.
Bill doesn't bother to chase him. He waits just inside the corridor, which is actually pretty fucking ideal, to his way of thinking. He's visible to the main room, but doesn't have to stand with his back to it, which is good. He needs an audience, but he doesn't want to be a fucking sitting duck, either. This will actually work out fairly well. He leans back against the wall by the pay phone and crosses his arms over his chest. fingertips resting on the butt of his gun, and just waits.
He can feel the nerves coming from the main room, and is frankly glad to have a wall at his back. He divides his attention between the room and the corridor, keeping his posture indolent, keeping his expression bland and patient. He lights a fag, because MacKinnon had always smoked more than Bill ever does, as a rule.
It doesn't take Flack long to figure out there isn't much he can do back there, since the emergency exit is temporarily non-operational (thanks to a tire iron from the boot of the Mustang). Bill supposes Flack could've chosen to cower in the loo or the storage room, but he proves to be smart enough to understand that won't help him.
Sort of Flack's problem, really. Smart enough to understand simple situations, not quite smart enough to figure out how to use them to his advantage. It's why he's always been a flunkie. Another thing that Bill doesn't really hold against him.
Bill has a theory about there being a finite number of IQ points in the world. He figures he has blokes like Flack to thank for some of his, so it'd be hypocritical to blame him for it.
Of course, he'll use it against Flack, if he can. But that's par for the course in this world, unspoken but generally understood, except for by the very stupid. And Flack wasn't very stupid. Only moderately so.
At least he has the balls to walk right up to Bill, instead of lurking at the back of the corner Bill has arranged for him. Another example of Flack's inability to turn a situation to his advantage, not that Bill's complaining. It makes Bill's life easier.
Flack is bristling nerves and uncertainty, but his voice is fairly steady when he says: "MacKinnon." As soon as he says it, his eyes flicker, and Bill smiles slightly. Poor bastard. Being stupid must be crap, but being just smart enough to know you aren't smart enough must be really fucking awful. Flack is just smart enough to understand he's already made a mistake, just smart enough to realize that even acknowledging Bill -- especially using a name that he knows isn't real -- had been a mistake. He should have breezed on by. Bill isn't actually blocking his path. He should have forced Bill to make the first move.
"Hello, Flack," Bill says, holding on to his easy smile. It's pointless to deny that he's enjoying the shimmer of fear in Flack's eyes. It's the reason he has come here, after all.
Several people in the main room decide that now is a good time to leave. Bill doesn't blame them, really. He ignores the mini-exodus. They'll be back when they're sure he's gone, anyway, and most of them will claim to have been present for the whole thing in the aftermath. It won't affect things in the long run.
Flack fidgets, eyes cutting toward the main room. Bill lets him. He's not that worried about Flack finding the help he's looking for with this lot. He keeps his gaze unwavering, and says nothing. He thinks he can push Flack into another misstep, if he's willing to outwait him. Bill is, at least for the moment. Though he can't afford to let it go on too long. Someone might start feeling brave. Or stupid.
Flack doesn't disappoint him, this time, though. Impatience is just another part of Flack's problem. He'll never run with J.J., or even with the likes of Rings. There are a combination of character flaws working against the poor bugger.
"What the hell are you doing here, you fucking Narc pig?" he snarls, a bit of a desperate note to it, which makes Bill feel a little sorry for him again.
Neither of them is surprised when Bill hits him. More of a tap, really, just enough to let Flack know he's serious. "You kiss your mum with that nasty mouth, Flack?" Bill asks gently, and sees more immediate fear unfold in Flack's face. It's one of MacKinnon's stock phrases, quite deliberately used in this case. In the past, Bill had used it as combination warning and threat: Watch your fucking mouth, or I'll break your teeth, and smile while I do it.
Flack clearly remembers. He wipes blood off his lips with the back of his hand and eyes Bill warily. "What do you want?" he asks grudgingly, and refuses to meet Bill's gaze.
Bill tuts softly and hooks a finger into his belt, not-so-subtly pulling his jacket back so the butt of his gun is visible. "Honestly, how is it that natural selection hasn't edited you out, Flack? I want to believe in Darwinism, I really do, but you're a perfect manifestation of the fact that, by definition, 50% of people must always fall below the mean. I keep hoping for the mean to rise, and it just keeps not happening. Why? It's questions like these that keep me up at night."
Flack sets his jaw, but doesn't reply, which doesn't particularly bother Bill. There really isn't an answer to that question anyway.
"Well, never mind. I suppose if you could answer the question it wouldn't have occurred to me, as it applies to you." Bill shifts slightly, tenses and sets his body, and watches Flack react to it without knowing he's doing it, shrinking back, shoulders rounding. Bill has a hard time understanding how anyone could be so unaware of their own body and the messages it's sending, but he's seen it before. "Let's concentrate on asking questions you might be able to answer, shall we? How much is Dominguez paying for dead cops these days?"
Flack straightens a little, possibly feeling a bit more confident at the reminder that Bill has a big fat price on his head, and manages something that could pass for a smile. "Enough," he spits.
Bill hits him again, of course, a doubled-up up fist to the gut this time, and quite a bit harder. "Think so, do you?" he asks casually, and stands back to wait for Flack to catch his breath. He'd taken advantage of the position to check for a gun, but unless Flack is wearing an ankle holster, he seems to be without one. Rather than reassuring him, Bill is abruptly nervous. The only time he'd seen Flack go unarmed was in the company of bigger and badder fish. There isn't anyone in the main room that fits that description. Not yet, anyway.
He thinks it might be a good idea to do this as quickly as he can.
"How much?" he repeats gently, and Flack's gaze skips out to the main room for an instant, searching. Looking for someone, yeah, and while that's definitely not a good thing, at least Bill knows it. He catches the front of Flack's violently green shirt in one fist, and bounces him off the wall hard enough to stun him for a moment. He doesn't feel a moment's guilt for the loud 'thunk' of Flack's head bouncing off plaster. "I don't like to repeat myself," he says, keeping his voice quiet and deliberate. "I didn't have time to chat with the other two fuckwits, Flack, but I'll make time to have a nice, long conversation with you, if I have to."
It's bollocks, but it works. Flack's eyes widen as he processes the implication, and there is a gleam of panic in them when he cuts his gaze into the main room again. Bill sighs and whams him back against the wall again, genuinely impatient. "Pay attention, you stupid cunt. I don't have all fucking night."
"Half a million," Flack mutters grudgingly, and for a moment Bill is so shocked he nearly lets go of the idiot.
He recovers quickly (he really hasn't much choice, the low rumble in the main room has grown louder, the natives are getting restless). "Well," he says pleasantly, working hard to keep his tone amused instead of fucking gobsmacked. "It's good to be appreciated, I suppose." He'd like to ask about Orlando, but he can't get away with it, not in this persona, so he doesn't. He wishes for a moment that he hadn't jammed the tire iron through the handle of the emergency exit. It suddenly seems a lot more likely that he will be the one that needs to get the fuck out quickly, and he's blocked his own means of escape.
The amount of the payoff changes everything. It hadn't even occurred to Bill that it would be so bloody much. Never in his wildest dreams had he expected it to be even near that much.
And he understands quite clearly that even relatively smart people will risk a great deal for that kind of money.
He's in danger from every person in this place right now. His heart is pounding with the knowledge, and there is prickly new sweat gathering at the back of his neck, and while he had been wary, yeah -- because only fucking moron would go into a situation like this without being wary -- he hadn't been exactly afraid, not until now. He has badly misjudged the seriousness of this situation. He had expected it to be a lot. He had expected a hundred thousand, maybe a hundred and fifty, and that was bad enough, that would draw professionals, but half a million fucking dollars?
He's in fucking trouble.
"Who?" he asks, steady, calm, because right now appearances are everything. They'll fall on him like wild dogs if they smell fear, and he can't take them all.
"It's open fucking season, MacKinnon," Flack sneers, having another brief bout of idiotic confidence (which is bad news, it means he sees what Bill is feeling, at least a little bit -- either that, or he's made a connection that Bill wouldn’t have expected of him to be capable of), but his eyes cut away when he says it, and his tone is too quick, too confident.
Bill narrows his eyes and cocks his head, and Flack's hands curl into nervous fists at his sides. "You're not telling me everything," Bill says, and Flack's fists curl and uncurl as he sneaks a glance into the main room again. If Bill weren't in such a bloody hurry, he'd ask who the hell Flack is fucking waiting for. As it is, he hits Flack again, twice, once in the gut and once high across his cheekbone. Flack's head bounces off the wall and he whooshes as the breath leaves him, then sinks down to his knees on the filthy floor. "I'm not a patient bloke, Flack," Bill says, rubbing lightly at his knuckles. He uses his right hand to unsnap the strap across the butt of his gun, and Flack's eyes flicker up, alarmed. He has good reason to be; Bill had only unholstered his gun once in the entire three years he'd been undercover, and he'd killed two people that time. There had been a lot of speculation about it, until it had become clear that Bill didn't really need his gun to be dangerous. Bill had heard a lot of the stories about himself second and third hand, and had been highly amused by them, though it had been his practice to neither confirm nor deny any exaggerations of his encounters. "As I see it, you have two options. Tell me, and I'll go away, leaving you not too badly off. Don't tell me, and I'll shoot you, and continue this conversation with someone else, who, with luck, will be a bit smarter than you."
"You can't shoot me," Flack protests, looking up at Bill from his knees, his voice strident enough to cut through the background rumble from the main room, so that things go quiet in there. "You're a cop, you can't shoot me!" Bill doesn't divert his attention from Flack, but he's aware of his time running out, that his margin of safety is a lot fucking thinner, time-wise, than he'd initially estimated, and somewhere out there, someone has probably already used their handy-dandy mobile phone to ring and report Bill's current location to someone who is likely to be a lot more dangerous than Flack.
"Can't I?" he asks, and does something he's never done in his life.
He draws his gun and presses the barrel against Flack's forehead, and smiles.
"Are you sure, Flack?"
Apparently, Flack isn't. Bill smells the sharply bitter ammonia scent of Flack's fear at the same time that he starts talking, words coming so quickly that they're falling over one another in their hurry to escape Flack's throat.
"He called it off, Dominguez called it off a few hours ago, said to pass the word around, no one is supposed to touch you, no one is even supposes to talk to you, and he's going to fucking kill me, man!"
Bill believes him. He's too panicked to lie, and in Bill's experience, once a bloke has pissed his trousers, you can pretty much depend on getting the truth from him. But it doesn't make sense. "Why?"
"I don't know!" Flack insists quickly, his face twisted up with desperation. Billy draws the hammer back on the Sig; it's very loud in the silence that pervades the bar. It doesn't have to be cocked to fire, it's a semi-automatic, and everyone in this place knows that, but it's hard to remember details like that when the gun is jammed up against your skull. Flack makes a tiny sound, an almost-moan, and yammers: "I don't know, I don't fucking know, MacKinnon, he doesn't tell us shit, you know that, man, you fucking know that!"
It's true, Bill does. He eases the hammer down and pulls the gun back. Flack's shoulders slump, and he rubs furiously at his face for a moment.
Bill holsters the Sig and steps as far back as the narrow hall will permit. He says nothing for a moment, just looks at Flack while he thinks furiously. It doesn't make sense, it's completely out of character for Dominguez, who is a bit like a yappy dog in that once he sets his teeth into something, he never fucking lets go, no matter how hard you work to shake him off. And a hit of that size (half a million bleeding dollars!), you don't just pull it, you can't, not if it was just cash on the table rather than a contract deal. At the very least it would take time to spread the word that the offer is off the table, so Bill can't afford to feel safe yet, can't afford relief (but he feels it, he can't help it, which is stupid, foolish to trust something like this, something he doesn't yet understand), even if it means that he's probably not in immediate danger from anyone here right now.
"You're not a cop, you're fucking psycho," Flack mutters, and Bill smiles and pushes the other concerns to the back of his mind. He still has to get out of here, after all, and while that seems a lot less likely to be a problem, suddenly, he's not willing to bet his life on it.
"The two aren't mutually exclusive, you know," he says conversationally. He cracks the knuckles of his right hand by tucking each finger individually under his thumb and pressing, and watches Flack twitch with each tiny pop. "You're a touch high-strung, mate. You might consider another line of work."
Flack says nothing, which doesn't surprise Bill in the least. The conversation is basically over. Now it's just a matter of a (hopefully quiet) exit.
He turns toward the main room, still holding onto a smile that he doesn't feel, and a half-dozen people look away, unwilling to make eye contact. It's just amusing enough to make the smile feel a little more comfortable on his face.
He takes a deliberate pace through the room, fast enough to be business-like, slow enough to not be mistaken for hurrying, and he's almost out the door when his luck runs out.
Joe Bob already has his gun drawn when he opens the door and walks inside, which answers any questions Bill might have had about why he's here. Someone rang him, and he's here for Bill. Simple enough equation.
Bill wonders if Joe Bob has been "passed the word" that Bill isn't to be touched.
The look on his face makes Bill think it's unlikely. Well, that and having a gun pointed at him.
The silence seems a lot louder now that Bill is standing in the middle of it. He doesn't move (obviously), and doesn't speak. He doesn't like the look on Joe Bob's face. It's gloating and fever-bright, more evidence that he's not in the know about Dominguez having changed his mind.
Joe Bob had been one of Burelle's fuckwits as well, and he and Bill have butted heads before. Bill had kicked him in the face, once, and knocked him out, and he's the sort of bloke that holds a grudge forever.
But he isn't particularly bright and he isn't particularly fast, and Bill still might be able to get out of this alive if he doesn't fucking panic. He isn't the panicking sort, really, but he can already feel threads of red fear wriggling their way into his mind, because with half a million dollars as the prize, Joe Bob isn't likely to back down.
And in spite of what Flack had said, Bill doubts very much if Dominguez would be completely displeased if Bill didn't make it out of this bar alive.
"You really are a ballsy son of a bitch," Joe Bob says, grinning brightly, clearly prepared to gloat up a storm, which is fine by Bill, will give him a little time, at least, to figure something out. Joe Bob isn't a particularly good marksman, as far as Bill recalls, but from three feet, he can hardly fucking miss. "To just fucking walk in here like that, and think we're actually going to let you walk out again. You've got a lot of fucking balls."
The gun (Beretta 9mm, nine bullets in the clip and one in the chamber) doesn't even quiver, and Bill wonders if Joe Bob is on something that makes him braver than usual. Or maybe he's moved up into Burelle's spot -- not entirely outside the realm of possibility, and Bill hasn't exactly been in a position to keep track -- and that's what makes him so certain of himself.
"Just the standard two," Bill says tightly, not bothering to try and regulate the tension out of his voice. He's got other things to worry about. Holding a gun like that -- arm straight out, fully extended -- is hard bloody work, very taxing, and he figures he's got around 2 minutes before Joe Bob's starts feeling it. He isn't sure if it would be better to try and occupy that time, and Joe Bob's attention, until that happens and then try something (he isn't sure exactly what yet), or if he should make sure to do it before the two minute mark, in case Joe Bob (who isn't very bright or very patient) gets bored and just shoots him. There's nothing for it, he's going to have to gamble and hope for the best. "Before you shoot me, you might want to check with your mates, Joe Bob. There's some fairly pertinent news."
The opportunity presents itself so quickly that Bill almost doesn't recognize it, almost misses it. He'd expected to have to listen to Joe Bob blather for a bit longer, at least. He should've known, though, because he's seen Joe Bob cocky before, he's seen how recklessly he spends his attention when it really counts (possibly why Joe Bob never made it as a boxer), and it's Flack that Bill has to thank for two seconds worth of extra time that allow him to take advantage of Joe Bob's diverted attention. When Joe Bob cuts his eyes briefly away from Bill, presumably to find Flack or someone and look a question at him, Flack moves. In the pressing silence, the sound of Flack's boots on the floor is enormous, and he must be indicating something (though not out loud, whatever it is) to Joe Bob, something he doesn't like, because his brows draw down into a frown that could be puzzlement or displeasure (not that it really matters at this particular juncture), and he turns his head to look at Flack (probably). Bill thinks it's unlikely that there will be a better opportunity than this, so he moves.
If he's wrong, he's going to die, so he discards the possibility and takes a step forward, twisting his upper body sharply downward while he turns (a fairly standard block, if he'd actually been blocking anything, but he's not, he's winging it), in case Joe Bob starts firing (which he doesn't, bloke really is slow), putting himself well below gun level. Joe Bob is barely starting to react, gun lowering, when Bill barrels into his midsection with his elbow extended and angled upward to strike Joe Bob's solar plexus. It's probably enough to take him down all by itself (Joe Bob wheezes and starts to double over), but Bill's right hand is balled into a fist and desperately wants to connect to something (Joe Bob's left hand swings upward and fetches up against the side of Bill's face, and Bill ignores it except to be grateful it hadn't been the hand with the gun in it, because ow), so Bill drives it downward beneath his own body and into Joe Bob's groin, draws it back, pistons it forward again, does it twice more just for insurance, though Joe Bob's weight is now resting almost entirely against his shoulder, he's folded over and Bill is basically supporting him along his left side. When Bill straightens, shoving Joe Bob (doubled over and clutching at his goods) away, he topples over sideways like a bowling pin.
The gun is on the floor near Bill's left foot. No one else seems in a hurry to pick it up, so Bill does, jerking the clip out of the bottom and shoving it into his pocket. He opens the chamber and empties that out as well, adding the lone bullet to the jangle of clips in his jacket, and then thumbs the lock to disengage the slide and jerks it off, tossing it aside.
All that's left is the plastic grip, and Bill tosses it in Joe Bob's general direction.
Joe Bob hasn't moved, still curled up and clutching at himself.
Something warm trickles down the right side of Bill's face, and he uses a thumb to wipe at it. Blood. Joe Bob must've been wearing a ring or something. It had opened Bill's cheek, right across the cheekbone. It isn't serious, so Bill ignores it.
He turns to run his gaze along the rest of them, and they are all furiously otherwise occupied now, except Flack, who is looking like he's not sure if he's relieved or terrified.
"Tell Dominguez I'm still going to fucking take him down," he says, low and through clenched teeth, his whole body still thrumming with tension and the desire for violent exertion. He hates and loves this feeling, and he knows he can't trust it, that the illusion of strength and power is nothing more than adrenaline and endorphins, but it's going to take a long fucking time to wear off. It always does. "And he won't go alone."
He knows better than to make threats and promises when he's like this, too, but he does it anyhow. This threat, at least, isn't idle. Bill will take him down; he has no choice. His life ultimately depends on it. Dominguez won't stop until Bill is dead, no matter what deal is currently on or off the table, and he doesn't think for a second that this unexpected reprieve is anything but temporary.
He walks out the door without looking back over his shoulder, though the skin between his shoulder blades itches with the certainty that dozens of pairs of eyes are following him.
Once in the Mustang, hands gripping the cool, familiar feel of the steering wheel tightly, he has to force himself to drive, get a few miles away. He does it on automatic, his mind blank and empty, detached from his body.
Eventually he pulls over to let the shakes pass.
He manages a fairly impressive string of curses before he locates it, stuffed into a maroon gym bag that smells like every locker room Bill has ever been in: chemical cleaner and sweat socks. He shrugs off his jacket and pushes his arms through the straps. It takes him a few minutes to get the bloody thing sorted out, which is pretty fucking funny considering he'd worn it for so long (up to a few months ago) that it's still habit to reach for it when he gets dressed every morning.
Also in the gym bag are a wadded up pair of blue jeans, a hopelessly wrinkled (and smelly) t-shirt, a pair of socks, and a small necessities kit. Under all of that are two boxes of ammo and two loaded clips.
Bill retrieves his service weapon from its case under the spare tire, checks to be sure it's safe, and secures it in the shoulder holster. He stuffs the case in the gym bag, and both spare clips into his jacket pocket.
He thinks it's vaguely depressing how little of himself he has left in the Mustang, considering how long it's been his. He isn't sure what he'll do with the crap that he does carry around in it, however. He could stow it at the studio, or at Orlando's, he supposes, but he doesn't actually want the car anywhere near either place.
He isn't quite ready to give it up yet, but Susan is dead right about it being too fucking distinctive. He has momentary visions of what it might be replaced with -- one of narc's blatant stalker-vans, or maybe a slick-topped Crown Vic (heaven fucking forbid) with thirty bloody antennae bristling from the trunk and roof -- and sighs. Well fuck. It's never really been his car, anyhow. Get the fuck over it, Boyd.
He gazes into the boot for several seconds, pondering the Kevlar vest wedged beneath the laptop case. Eventually, he slams the boot and briefly hooks his fingertips under the edge, yanking to be sure it caught. He shrugs his jacket on, and just stands there for several seconds, thinking.
He shouldn't go to Keira's. He doesn't really want the car there, either. He's not even certain that she's aware that he knows where she lives. Although that hardly matters. If he'd accepted her earlier invitation, she'd know he knows by now.
But he can't go back to his flat, obviously. Susan's voice had indicated that very clearly, even if her words had been more judicious.
And once he takes care of business, he's going to need somewhere to bloody go. He knows better than to trust hotels, and he's not interested in safe houses that can double as holding facilities. And Orlando's is out of the question; Bill can't take Orlando looking at him with that fucked up amalgam of fear and awe and trust and love. Not tonight, and never mind that Orlando is probably the person best equipped to deal with Bill as he will inevitably be once he's slipped, if only briefly, back into MacKinnon. That fact only illustrates (pathetically) the fact that Bill's choices are exceedingly limited.
How fucked up is he, exactly, if Orlando is the only person who might understand what's going on with him. Bill snorts, grimly amused at the notion.
No matter what Susan thinks, he understands that now is the only time to go looking for information, whether it's "beyond stupid" or not.
There is a very distinct pattern to the way information travels in the lowest echelons of Dominguez's organization. It wafts downward like smoke, hazy and ephemeral and highly susceptible to interpretation. Tonight, the riff-raff will be buzzing with excitement and fear, glad to be alive (glad it hadn't been them), and terrified at the same time. Because they all understand that it might be them next time. They'd be sneering at the stupidity of their dead, bottom-feeding compatriots from one side of their mouths and railing against Dominguez's power over them from the other. And looking over their shoulders the whole time.
Right now, all they have is rumor and speculation.
By tomorrow, someone would have been sent 'round to lay out the "official word" -- and to "politely" remind them to shut their fucking gobs. Bill had performed that sort of public relations gig himself, as MacKinnon, and if he waits until that has been done, he'll get less information, or even no information.
Not acceptable.
The time to go looking for answers is now, while they're afraid and angry, before they've been told anything "official."
If he can do it before Dominguez spins it his own way, then Bill can make his version of things the standard against which every other version is measured.
Bill hadn't had shite to do with the deaths of those two idiots, but that doesn't matter. He's willing to let them think whatever they like, provided it jibes with his agenda, and he understands quite clearly how to take grapevine gossip and propaganda and fashion it into something like myth-based-on-fact. It has the added benefit of potentially eliminating Bill's dead-man-walking stigma. It's all a matter of telling it as close to the truth as will stand up under moderate scrutiny, and if he does it right, he might be able to make himself -- at least temporarily -- untouchable.
It helps that MacKinnon had been untouchable. No matter what name he goes by now, these people remember him as MacKinnon, that is who Bill will always be to them, and MacKinnon is a badass. All he has to do is reiterate that, demonstrate his willingness to continue in that vein, and whether it's real or feigned (and he doesn't know for sure himself), they'll accept it, because it will feel like business as usual to them.
All he needs to do is convince one moderately sized group (information spreads like wildfire through the creatures dangling at the bottom of the food chain) that he isn't less of a threat, isn't less formidable, because of his badge.
All in all, demonstrating a marked lack of concern for consequences isn't going to be that difficult for Bill to do. He thinks that's probably a bad sign, but he doesn't have time to really think about it now.
So no Kevlar -- MacKinnon would never -- and no pulled punches. Still having the Mustang (in all it's distinctive glory) is a plus, as well. It's recognizably Bill's (or MacKinnon's, which boils down to the same thing), and beats he hell out of trying to hail a taxi. Especially if he has to leave quickly, which won't happen if things go the way Bill intends, but which certainly could happen.
Most anything could happen in the course of the next couple of hours.
**
It only takes him ten minutes or so to take a few precautions. He's familiar with the way people act when they're cornered, and he doesn't have time to track anyone down. Once things warm up, it's fairly important that most of the people present hang around for the show.
Even if it does create a potential fire hazard.
**
He's glad not to see Rings or J.J.
He doesn't want to fuck up the first, and J.J. would've been risky. It's not so much that Bill has a problem with the whole gender thing; his general policy of not beating the crap out of females notwithstanding (and Bill isn't prepared to testify in court that J.J. even counts as a woman, he suspects she's more closely related to reptiles than human beings), J.J. richly deserves to have her fucking nose broken. But J.J. is adept at using her sex to her advantage, and she might have had the balls to actually file a fucking report with the PD if Bill had been forced get physical with her. Which would be very bad.
The low grumble of the crowd, interspersed with burst of raucous hoots and laughter, kicks up when Bill walks in. By the time he's scanned the place for familiar faces (many), though, it's settled back down to a low roar.
This isn't one of Dominguez's fucking "private" parties or flashy dance clubs, and he can sweep the entire expanse of the room quickly enough to get a firm idea of how many people he's likely to have to watch out for within the first ten seconds. No one immediately gets up to leave (some of them pissed enough to be brave, some of them just curious enough to choose to stay), so Bill picks someone (Flack Daniels -- he likely thinks he's fucking funny -- small time meth but primarily deals E, had carried a revolver jammed into the back of his jeans the last time Bill had interacted with him, likely to have a knife on him somewhere, one of Burelle's flunkies, moderately bright and left handed, if Bill's memory serves him correctly) and strolls casually over.
The look on Flack's face as Bill approaches is totally justified. They've had run-ins before, and Flack had been one of Burelle's little fuckwits. Bill doesn't really hold it against him. It's in the nature of people like Flack to attach themselves to more powerful people, and Flack had simply managed to hook himself up with someone Bill loathed.
He really doesn't hold it against Flack, but he's disappointed when Flack stands and heads toward the back. There's a fire exit back there, and unless Flack has experienced a sudden and quite pressing need to take a piss in the alley out back, he's decided that discretion is the better part of valor. Not that it will do him any good.
Bill doesn't bother to chase him. He waits just inside the corridor, which is actually pretty fucking ideal, to his way of thinking. He's visible to the main room, but doesn't have to stand with his back to it, which is good. He needs an audience, but he doesn't want to be a fucking sitting duck, either. This will actually work out fairly well. He leans back against the wall by the pay phone and crosses his arms over his chest. fingertips resting on the butt of his gun, and just waits.
He can feel the nerves coming from the main room, and is frankly glad to have a wall at his back. He divides his attention between the room and the corridor, keeping his posture indolent, keeping his expression bland and patient. He lights a fag, because MacKinnon had always smoked more than Bill ever does, as a rule.
It doesn't take Flack long to figure out there isn't much he can do back there, since the emergency exit is temporarily non-operational (thanks to a tire iron from the boot of the Mustang). Bill supposes Flack could've chosen to cower in the loo or the storage room, but he proves to be smart enough to understand that won't help him.
Sort of Flack's problem, really. Smart enough to understand simple situations, not quite smart enough to figure out how to use them to his advantage. It's why he's always been a flunkie. Another thing that Bill doesn't really hold against him.
Bill has a theory about there being a finite number of IQ points in the world. He figures he has blokes like Flack to thank for some of his, so it'd be hypocritical to blame him for it.
Of course, he'll use it against Flack, if he can. But that's par for the course in this world, unspoken but generally understood, except for by the very stupid. And Flack wasn't very stupid. Only moderately so.
At least he has the balls to walk right up to Bill, instead of lurking at the back of the corner Bill has arranged for him. Another example of Flack's inability to turn a situation to his advantage, not that Bill's complaining. It makes Bill's life easier.
Flack is bristling nerves and uncertainty, but his voice is fairly steady when he says: "MacKinnon." As soon as he says it, his eyes flicker, and Bill smiles slightly. Poor bastard. Being stupid must be crap, but being just smart enough to know you aren't smart enough must be really fucking awful. Flack is just smart enough to understand he's already made a mistake, just smart enough to realize that even acknowledging Bill -- especially using a name that he knows isn't real -- had been a mistake. He should have breezed on by. Bill isn't actually blocking his path. He should have forced Bill to make the first move.
"Hello, Flack," Bill says, holding on to his easy smile. It's pointless to deny that he's enjoying the shimmer of fear in Flack's eyes. It's the reason he has come here, after all.
Several people in the main room decide that now is a good time to leave. Bill doesn't blame them, really. He ignores the mini-exodus. They'll be back when they're sure he's gone, anyway, and most of them will claim to have been present for the whole thing in the aftermath. It won't affect things in the long run.
Flack fidgets, eyes cutting toward the main room. Bill lets him. He's not that worried about Flack finding the help he's looking for with this lot. He keeps his gaze unwavering, and says nothing. He thinks he can push Flack into another misstep, if he's willing to outwait him. Bill is, at least for the moment. Though he can't afford to let it go on too long. Someone might start feeling brave. Or stupid.
Flack doesn't disappoint him, this time, though. Impatience is just another part of Flack's problem. He'll never run with J.J., or even with the likes of Rings. There are a combination of character flaws working against the poor bugger.
"What the hell are you doing here, you fucking Narc pig?" he snarls, a bit of a desperate note to it, which makes Bill feel a little sorry for him again.
Neither of them is surprised when Bill hits him. More of a tap, really, just enough to let Flack know he's serious. "You kiss your mum with that nasty mouth, Flack?" Bill asks gently, and sees more immediate fear unfold in Flack's face. It's one of MacKinnon's stock phrases, quite deliberately used in this case. In the past, Bill had used it as combination warning and threat: Watch your fucking mouth, or I'll break your teeth, and smile while I do it.
Flack clearly remembers. He wipes blood off his lips with the back of his hand and eyes Bill warily. "What do you want?" he asks grudgingly, and refuses to meet Bill's gaze.
Bill tuts softly and hooks a finger into his belt, not-so-subtly pulling his jacket back so the butt of his gun is visible. "Honestly, how is it that natural selection hasn't edited you out, Flack? I want to believe in Darwinism, I really do, but you're a perfect manifestation of the fact that, by definition, 50% of people must always fall below the mean. I keep hoping for the mean to rise, and it just keeps not happening. Why? It's questions like these that keep me up at night."
Flack sets his jaw, but doesn't reply, which doesn't particularly bother Bill. There really isn't an answer to that question anyway.
"Well, never mind. I suppose if you could answer the question it wouldn't have occurred to me, as it applies to you." Bill shifts slightly, tenses and sets his body, and watches Flack react to it without knowing he's doing it, shrinking back, shoulders rounding. Bill has a hard time understanding how anyone could be so unaware of their own body and the messages it's sending, but he's seen it before. "Let's concentrate on asking questions you might be able to answer, shall we? How much is Dominguez paying for dead cops these days?"
Flack straightens a little, possibly feeling a bit more confident at the reminder that Bill has a big fat price on his head, and manages something that could pass for a smile. "Enough," he spits.
Bill hits him again, of course, a doubled-up up fist to the gut this time, and quite a bit harder. "Think so, do you?" he asks casually, and stands back to wait for Flack to catch his breath. He'd taken advantage of the position to check for a gun, but unless Flack is wearing an ankle holster, he seems to be without one. Rather than reassuring him, Bill is abruptly nervous. The only time he'd seen Flack go unarmed was in the company of bigger and badder fish. There isn't anyone in the main room that fits that description. Not yet, anyway.
He thinks it might be a good idea to do this as quickly as he can.
"How much?" he repeats gently, and Flack's gaze skips out to the main room for an instant, searching. Looking for someone, yeah, and while that's definitely not a good thing, at least Bill knows it. He catches the front of Flack's violently green shirt in one fist, and bounces him off the wall hard enough to stun him for a moment. He doesn't feel a moment's guilt for the loud 'thunk' of Flack's head bouncing off plaster. "I don't like to repeat myself," he says, keeping his voice quiet and deliberate. "I didn't have time to chat with the other two fuckwits, Flack, but I'll make time to have a nice, long conversation with you, if I have to."
It's bollocks, but it works. Flack's eyes widen as he processes the implication, and there is a gleam of panic in them when he cuts his gaze into the main room again. Bill sighs and whams him back against the wall again, genuinely impatient. "Pay attention, you stupid cunt. I don't have all fucking night."
"Half a million," Flack mutters grudgingly, and for a moment Bill is so shocked he nearly lets go of the idiot.
He recovers quickly (he really hasn't much choice, the low rumble in the main room has grown louder, the natives are getting restless). "Well," he says pleasantly, working hard to keep his tone amused instead of fucking gobsmacked. "It's good to be appreciated, I suppose." He'd like to ask about Orlando, but he can't get away with it, not in this persona, so he doesn't. He wishes for a moment that he hadn't jammed the tire iron through the handle of the emergency exit. It suddenly seems a lot more likely that he will be the one that needs to get the fuck out quickly, and he's blocked his own means of escape.
The amount of the payoff changes everything. It hadn't even occurred to Bill that it would be so bloody much. Never in his wildest dreams had he expected it to be even near that much.
And he understands quite clearly that even relatively smart people will risk a great deal for that kind of money.
He's in danger from every person in this place right now. His heart is pounding with the knowledge, and there is prickly new sweat gathering at the back of his neck, and while he had been wary, yeah -- because only fucking moron would go into a situation like this without being wary -- he hadn't been exactly afraid, not until now. He has badly misjudged the seriousness of this situation. He had expected it to be a lot. He had expected a hundred thousand, maybe a hundred and fifty, and that was bad enough, that would draw professionals, but half a million fucking dollars?
He's in fucking trouble.
"Who?" he asks, steady, calm, because right now appearances are everything. They'll fall on him like wild dogs if they smell fear, and he can't take them all.
"It's open fucking season, MacKinnon," Flack sneers, having another brief bout of idiotic confidence (which is bad news, it means he sees what Bill is feeling, at least a little bit -- either that, or he's made a connection that Bill wouldn’t have expected of him to be capable of), but his eyes cut away when he says it, and his tone is too quick, too confident.
Bill narrows his eyes and cocks his head, and Flack's hands curl into nervous fists at his sides. "You're not telling me everything," Bill says, and Flack's fists curl and uncurl as he sneaks a glance into the main room again. If Bill weren't in such a bloody hurry, he'd ask who the hell Flack is fucking waiting for. As it is, he hits Flack again, twice, once in the gut and once high across his cheekbone. Flack's head bounces off the wall and he whooshes as the breath leaves him, then sinks down to his knees on the filthy floor. "I'm not a patient bloke, Flack," Bill says, rubbing lightly at his knuckles. He uses his right hand to unsnap the strap across the butt of his gun, and Flack's eyes flicker up, alarmed. He has good reason to be; Bill had only unholstered his gun once in the entire three years he'd been undercover, and he'd killed two people that time. There had been a lot of speculation about it, until it had become clear that Bill didn't really need his gun to be dangerous. Bill had heard a lot of the stories about himself second and third hand, and had been highly amused by them, though it had been his practice to neither confirm nor deny any exaggerations of his encounters. "As I see it, you have two options. Tell me, and I'll go away, leaving you not too badly off. Don't tell me, and I'll shoot you, and continue this conversation with someone else, who, with luck, will be a bit smarter than you."
"You can't shoot me," Flack protests, looking up at Bill from his knees, his voice strident enough to cut through the background rumble from the main room, so that things go quiet in there. "You're a cop, you can't shoot me!" Bill doesn't divert his attention from Flack, but he's aware of his time running out, that his margin of safety is a lot fucking thinner, time-wise, than he'd initially estimated, and somewhere out there, someone has probably already used their handy-dandy mobile phone to ring and report Bill's current location to someone who is likely to be a lot more dangerous than Flack.
"Can't I?" he asks, and does something he's never done in his life.
He draws his gun and presses the barrel against Flack's forehead, and smiles.
"Are you sure, Flack?"
Apparently, Flack isn't. Bill smells the sharply bitter ammonia scent of Flack's fear at the same time that he starts talking, words coming so quickly that they're falling over one another in their hurry to escape Flack's throat.
"He called it off, Dominguez called it off a few hours ago, said to pass the word around, no one is supposed to touch you, no one is even supposes to talk to you, and he's going to fucking kill me, man!"
Bill believes him. He's too panicked to lie, and in Bill's experience, once a bloke has pissed his trousers, you can pretty much depend on getting the truth from him. But it doesn't make sense. "Why?"
"I don't know!" Flack insists quickly, his face twisted up with desperation. Billy draws the hammer back on the Sig; it's very loud in the silence that pervades the bar. It doesn't have to be cocked to fire, it's a semi-automatic, and everyone in this place knows that, but it's hard to remember details like that when the gun is jammed up against your skull. Flack makes a tiny sound, an almost-moan, and yammers: "I don't know, I don't fucking know, MacKinnon, he doesn't tell us shit, you know that, man, you fucking know that!"
It's true, Bill does. He eases the hammer down and pulls the gun back. Flack's shoulders slump, and he rubs furiously at his face for a moment.
Bill holsters the Sig and steps as far back as the narrow hall will permit. He says nothing for a moment, just looks at Flack while he thinks furiously. It doesn't make sense, it's completely out of character for Dominguez, who is a bit like a yappy dog in that once he sets his teeth into something, he never fucking lets go, no matter how hard you work to shake him off. And a hit of that size (half a million bleeding dollars!), you don't just pull it, you can't, not if it was just cash on the table rather than a contract deal. At the very least it would take time to spread the word that the offer is off the table, so Bill can't afford to feel safe yet, can't afford relief (but he feels it, he can't help it, which is stupid, foolish to trust something like this, something he doesn't yet understand), even if it means that he's probably not in immediate danger from anyone here right now.
"You're not a cop, you're fucking psycho," Flack mutters, and Bill smiles and pushes the other concerns to the back of his mind. He still has to get out of here, after all, and while that seems a lot less likely to be a problem, suddenly, he's not willing to bet his life on it.
"The two aren't mutually exclusive, you know," he says conversationally. He cracks the knuckles of his right hand by tucking each finger individually under his thumb and pressing, and watches Flack twitch with each tiny pop. "You're a touch high-strung, mate. You might consider another line of work."
Flack says nothing, which doesn't surprise Bill in the least. The conversation is basically over. Now it's just a matter of a (hopefully quiet) exit.
He turns toward the main room, still holding onto a smile that he doesn't feel, and a half-dozen people look away, unwilling to make eye contact. It's just amusing enough to make the smile feel a little more comfortable on his face.
He takes a deliberate pace through the room, fast enough to be business-like, slow enough to not be mistaken for hurrying, and he's almost out the door when his luck runs out.
Joe Bob already has his gun drawn when he opens the door and walks inside, which answers any questions Bill might have had about why he's here. Someone rang him, and he's here for Bill. Simple enough equation.
Bill wonders if Joe Bob has been "passed the word" that Bill isn't to be touched.
The look on his face makes Bill think it's unlikely. Well, that and having a gun pointed at him.
The silence seems a lot louder now that Bill is standing in the middle of it. He doesn't move (obviously), and doesn't speak. He doesn't like the look on Joe Bob's face. It's gloating and fever-bright, more evidence that he's not in the know about Dominguez having changed his mind.
Joe Bob had been one of Burelle's fuckwits as well, and he and Bill have butted heads before. Bill had kicked him in the face, once, and knocked him out, and he's the sort of bloke that holds a grudge forever.
But he isn't particularly bright and he isn't particularly fast, and Bill still might be able to get out of this alive if he doesn't fucking panic. He isn't the panicking sort, really, but he can already feel threads of red fear wriggling their way into his mind, because with half a million dollars as the prize, Joe Bob isn't likely to back down.
And in spite of what Flack had said, Bill doubts very much if Dominguez would be completely displeased if Bill didn't make it out of this bar alive.
"You really are a ballsy son of a bitch," Joe Bob says, grinning brightly, clearly prepared to gloat up a storm, which is fine by Bill, will give him a little time, at least, to figure something out. Joe Bob isn't a particularly good marksman, as far as Bill recalls, but from three feet, he can hardly fucking miss. "To just fucking walk in here like that, and think we're actually going to let you walk out again. You've got a lot of fucking balls."
The gun (Beretta 9mm, nine bullets in the clip and one in the chamber) doesn't even quiver, and Bill wonders if Joe Bob is on something that makes him braver than usual. Or maybe he's moved up into Burelle's spot -- not entirely outside the realm of possibility, and Bill hasn't exactly been in a position to keep track -- and that's what makes him so certain of himself.
"Just the standard two," Bill says tightly, not bothering to try and regulate the tension out of his voice. He's got other things to worry about. Holding a gun like that -- arm straight out, fully extended -- is hard bloody work, very taxing, and he figures he's got around 2 minutes before Joe Bob's starts feeling it. He isn't sure if it would be better to try and occupy that time, and Joe Bob's attention, until that happens and then try something (he isn't sure exactly what yet), or if he should make sure to do it before the two minute mark, in case Joe Bob (who isn't very bright or very patient) gets bored and just shoots him. There's nothing for it, he's going to have to gamble and hope for the best. "Before you shoot me, you might want to check with your mates, Joe Bob. There's some fairly pertinent news."
The opportunity presents itself so quickly that Bill almost doesn't recognize it, almost misses it. He'd expected to have to listen to Joe Bob blather for a bit longer, at least. He should've known, though, because he's seen Joe Bob cocky before, he's seen how recklessly he spends his attention when it really counts (possibly why Joe Bob never made it as a boxer), and it's Flack that Bill has to thank for two seconds worth of extra time that allow him to take advantage of Joe Bob's diverted attention. When Joe Bob cuts his eyes briefly away from Bill, presumably to find Flack or someone and look a question at him, Flack moves. In the pressing silence, the sound of Flack's boots on the floor is enormous, and he must be indicating something (though not out loud, whatever it is) to Joe Bob, something he doesn't like, because his brows draw down into a frown that could be puzzlement or displeasure (not that it really matters at this particular juncture), and he turns his head to look at Flack (probably). Bill thinks it's unlikely that there will be a better opportunity than this, so he moves.
If he's wrong, he's going to die, so he discards the possibility and takes a step forward, twisting his upper body sharply downward while he turns (a fairly standard block, if he'd actually been blocking anything, but he's not, he's winging it), in case Joe Bob starts firing (which he doesn't, bloke really is slow), putting himself well below gun level. Joe Bob is barely starting to react, gun lowering, when Bill barrels into his midsection with his elbow extended and angled upward to strike Joe Bob's solar plexus. It's probably enough to take him down all by itself (Joe Bob wheezes and starts to double over), but Bill's right hand is balled into a fist and desperately wants to connect to something (Joe Bob's left hand swings upward and fetches up against the side of Bill's face, and Bill ignores it except to be grateful it hadn't been the hand with the gun in it, because ow), so Bill drives it downward beneath his own body and into Joe Bob's groin, draws it back, pistons it forward again, does it twice more just for insurance, though Joe Bob's weight is now resting almost entirely against his shoulder, he's folded over and Bill is basically supporting him along his left side. When Bill straightens, shoving Joe Bob (doubled over and clutching at his goods) away, he topples over sideways like a bowling pin.
The gun is on the floor near Bill's left foot. No one else seems in a hurry to pick it up, so Bill does, jerking the clip out of the bottom and shoving it into his pocket. He opens the chamber and empties that out as well, adding the lone bullet to the jangle of clips in his jacket, and then thumbs the lock to disengage the slide and jerks it off, tossing it aside.
All that's left is the plastic grip, and Bill tosses it in Joe Bob's general direction.
Joe Bob hasn't moved, still curled up and clutching at himself.
Something warm trickles down the right side of Bill's face, and he uses a thumb to wipe at it. Blood. Joe Bob must've been wearing a ring or something. It had opened Bill's cheek, right across the cheekbone. It isn't serious, so Bill ignores it.
He turns to run his gaze along the rest of them, and they are all furiously otherwise occupied now, except Flack, who is looking like he's not sure if he's relieved or terrified.
"Tell Dominguez I'm still going to fucking take him down," he says, low and through clenched teeth, his whole body still thrumming with tension and the desire for violent exertion. He hates and loves this feeling, and he knows he can't trust it, that the illusion of strength and power is nothing more than adrenaline and endorphins, but it's going to take a long fucking time to wear off. It always does. "And he won't go alone."
He knows better than to make threats and promises when he's like this, too, but he does it anyhow. This threat, at least, isn't idle. Bill will take him down; he has no choice. His life ultimately depends on it. Dominguez won't stop until Bill is dead, no matter what deal is currently on or off the table, and he doesn't think for a second that this unexpected reprieve is anything but temporary.
He walks out the door without looking back over his shoulder, though the skin between his shoulder blades itches with the certainty that dozens of pairs of eyes are following him.
Once in the Mustang, hands gripping the cool, familiar feel of the steering wheel tightly, he has to force himself to drive, get a few miles away. He does it on automatic, his mind blank and empty, detached from his body.
Eventually he pulls over to let the shakes pass.