Fluff

Chapter Seven - Racket

Rose brought Emily, Athena and Sam to the back of the restaurant. The air was cloying with the smell of grease and cheese and tomato sauce. Emily expected to find a few people in the kitchens but they were empty. Was it only Rose and the girl at the counter?

“We’ll have to make it quick, Rose said. “It’s just me on the floor until just before noon. We don’t usually have much business in the morning, but I need time to cook and prep things for the rest of the day.”

“We’ll try not to take too much of your time,” Emily said. “This isn’t anything too urgent.”

“Hmm,” was Rose’s only reply.

She brought them to a small office that was little more than a desk covered in paperwork and a computer that looked like it was old when Emily was starting school for the first time. The office was too small for them to sit, so Emily pushed the one seat on their side of the desk aside, then she folded her hands at the small of her back. It was less awkward than not knowing what to do with them.

“Alright,” Rose said. The woman fell onto her office chair, the seat squeaking in protest. “What’s all this about?”

Emily licked her lips. It was now or never.

Which is why it was terribly inconvenient of her mind to just empty itself of all thoughts all at once.

The silence stretched out for a few seconds past awkward when Sam jumped in. “You know the villain, Cement?”

Rose’s eyes narrowed. “No. No, I don’t.”

Sam nodded. “Good, makes sense that someone sensible wouldn’t know him. Not that it matters. He was taken out by some heroes recently. No one’s left from his organisation. Not that a small-fry like him has an organisation of any sort, of course.”

Rose nodded slowly. “I don’t suppose he would. Not that it’s any business of mine.”

“Course not,” Sam said. “Now, the Boss here decided, out of the kindness of her heart, to make the rounds of all the places that she felt might... ah, be aware that Cement’s fall was none of their business and make sure that everything was good with them.”

Rose sniffed. “Subtle,” she said. The woman pulled a drawer of her desk open, and Emily tensed. Was she going to pull a gun out? Instead, a letter envelope hit the table with the dull thwap. “This is for the month.”

“Um,” Emily said.

Sam stepped up and took the envelope. She opened it, and Emily saw the flash of green in it. Money?

“We appreciate it,” Sam said. “Is there anything we can do to help? We love donations from the community, but it’s only fair that we give back, right?”

Rose nodded. “Damn right. Cement had a soft touch to him, kept things nice and smooth. Not that I’d know, of course. Now, if you are... collecting community donations in his place, then you’ll have to smooth things out in the community the same as he did, right?”

“That sounds very fair,” Sam said.

“Good. I’ve had two delivery drivers waylaid near the industrial park. You know the place. Group of punks calling themselves the Chains or somesuch. Took our goods and emptied my driver’s pockets too.”

“What sort of goods were your drivers carrying?” Sam asked.

Rose stared at her. “Pizza. We only deal in pizza. Sometimes subs. Often fries. But mostly pizza. I don’t do business with anything more complicated than that. Margins are tight, but I can live with them. What I can't have is more drivers quitting because they’re getting struck up by some punks, and I can’t just stop delivering in a part of the city, not when a quarter of my custom comes from there. If you want next week’s donation, you take care of that. Fair?”

“You’re, um, very open about this,” Emily said.

The woman sniffed. “Girl, I’ve been running this place since I was younger than you are. It was my dad’s place, and his father’s before him. I know how the world works. Cement did right by us, but your sort never lasts forever. Do good by us too and things will keep on keeping on.”

“Sounds good to me,” Sam said. She tucked the letter into her purse as casually as if it had been a pamphlet, then she gave Rose a quick nod. “We’ll get out of your hair, let you get back to work.”

“Sure thing,” Rose said. “Let me get you some fries on the way out.”

The three of them were shown out of the restaurant by means of a backdoor leading to an alley that smelled keenly of trash. At least Emily had a large bag full of nearly expired fries that Rose had shoved into her arms to keep the odour at bay.

“That went well,” Sam said. “Who knew that extorting money from people was so easy?”

“That... was easy, yeah,” Emily said.

“Well, easy-ish,” Sam said. “At a guess you have like, three hundred bucks here. It’s not a ton, and it’s not what I’d want as payment to have to deal with an entire gang.”

“What?” Emily asked.

“Those Chains she mentioned,” Sam said. “The ones messing with her drivers. You have to take care of them now. That’s the whole gimmick with protection money, right? You get the money, but you kinda have to offer protection too, otherwise the business might start looking for someone else who’ll accept their money to get rid of you.”

“Oh, right,” Emily said.

Sam pulled the letter out and smacked it into Emily’s hand. “There ya go. I’d tuck that away. Don’t want it to be too obvious that you’ve committed some crime.”

“Uh,” Emily said. She looked at the letter for a moment, then folded it and stuffed it in a pocket. It almost felt warm against her side, like something she wasn’t supposed to have.

Sam stretched. “Right, next place? Or did you want to send a message first?”

“Send a message?” Emily asked.

“You know, beat the snot out of that Chains gang before the heroes get to them. Then when you come to others for protection stuff they’ll know you mean business.”

“Sounds logical to me,” Athena said.

Emily shifted the bag of fries around, then rubbed at her eyes. “There’s a few places I wanted to visit. One of them might be closer to the industrial area. I left my notebook in your car.”

“Brilliant!” Sam said. “In that case, masks off and let’s head back.”

They met with Teddy and Trinity on the way back, the two were excited to hear Athena’s exaggerated recounting of the events--which painted Rose as a scary monster of a woman--and were even more excited about the fries.

“Sho wherhre whe going nhow?”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” Emily chided.

Teddy swallowed, barely chewing the fist-full of fries she’d shoved into her maw. “Where are we going now?” she asked.

Emily didn’t answer until they were back at Sam’s car and everyone was stuffed into place. She pulled out her notebook and shuffled the pages to the list of addresses she had to visit. “I don’t know if any of these are close to the industrial area,” she said. She didn’t have a mental map of the city that included all the street names she was looking at.

“Let me see,” Sam asked. She leaned over and read the addresses until pointing to one. “That’s close. Just a block over. Man, these addresses are all over the city.”

“Cement must have taken a while to set this up.”

“Most of them are mom and pop kind of places too,” Sam said.

“Huh?” Emily asked.

“No franchises. Just family-owned sorts of places,” Sam explained.

Emily frowned, but it didn’t take much thought for it to make sense. The owner of a franchise was likely too far away to care about protection money, and their store was an investment, not something they needed to live. That kind of detachment would make it hard for them to really care.

“I guess that makes sense,” she settled on. “So this place next?”

“It's a barber shop,” Sam said. “Been there forever. I went with my dad once or twice. Not for my own hair, mind. Lots of old guys who just sit around and chat about nothing all day, usually complaining about how things used to be in their day. You know the sort.”

Emily nodded. She'd accompanied her father to a place or two like that. The men there always strained her social nerves. “Well then, let’s head over. Hopefully we can get this all over with before noon.”

“Yeah, we wanna finish before lunch,” Teddy said from the back.

“Can’t be villains while hungry,” Trinity said. One of her currently had the fry bag tipped upside down over her head and was licking the greasy insides of the empty bag.

Emily rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you’re right,” she said.

***