Revenant

Chapter 11

Fun fact - I hate sweating.

The night air was warm and humid, enough so that I was slightly uncomfortable to be walking around in a spring coat. Nobody else I'd seen was wearing one. Still, I needed something to hide my underclothing and my easily detachable velcro rig, seeing as how I was operating at street level this time around. The baggy beige windbreaker was bulky enough in all the right places, and was cheap enough that it wouldn't really get noticed or draw attention to me. Sometimes sweating, while unpleasant, is a necessary part of the job.

Besides, the black suit jacket I was wearing underneath my windbreaker was the real culprit. A windbreaker has vents to allow it to breathe - a suit jacket does not. Inconvenient as it was, when I'm working and am in a position where I can be seen, I almost always have a throwaway coat and other appearance-altering props that I can toss or change up in a hurry. Tonight it was back-combed hair, a beige windbreaker and a pair of thick black-rimmed reading glasses.

And so I sweltered uncomfortably, trying to appear as though I wasn't, doing my best to look like some ordinary guy who figured a late night stroll would do him some good. After two hours of practice, I figured I was getting pretty good at it.

The fellow I was following around, Nick, was plenty scared. Quite obviously he'd heard about what happened to Sack the other night. Of course, he'd probably also heard what happened to Shoe's buddy Carl as well, so maybe it was me who was actually scaring him.

Doubtful, actually. When I spoke with him over the phone he seemed very grateful to learn that I was going to be tailing him this evening. Actually, he sort of started out grateful, then probably realized that me deciding to follow him around probably meant that I figured he was next on Stevie's list. That kind of changed his mood a bit.

Me, I was just glad that I'd finally been introduced to a mafioso with a real, grown-up name.

It's funny how exciting most people believe organized crime to be. It really, really isn't. I mean, take Nick for example. Nick's job involved walking along a staggeringly long stretch of coastal property and visiting various seedy-looking places, both businesses and dwellings, and doing something that took about ten or fifteen minutes or so. Sometimes it involved yelling. Once, it involved the sound of something breaking, and a threat of him returning if 'Diavolo doesn't hear from you very soon'.

Of course, I should point out that I didn't want to look like I was tailing him, so I kept about a half-block away at all times. And yet even from that distance, I still managed to hear Nick 'working' from time to time. I'm guessing that Diavolo didn't hire him for his subtlety, or his discreet nature.

The whole thing was very much like the lying in wait that I'd done the night before. Same feeling of trying to stay keyed up and ready for anything to start happening at any second. And with the same amount of nothing happening, too. The only real difference was the fact I was walking around. And sweating.

Oh, and the presence of the local creatures of the night, of course.

It was one-o-clock in the morning, but the particular streets Nick was touring were practically teeming with activity. I saw five or six people every block or so, and the activities most were engaged in made it clear to anybody walking by that they'd stumbled over to the proverbial 'wrong side of the tracks'.

Of course, that made my job much trickier. See, if you don't know where your target is going to be, but you have a general area and time that you expect they might show up, you have to stay alert. You inspect every face you encounter, and keep your eyes open. However, the people who tend to inhabit places like the ones I'd been walking through will occasionally take exception to people with overly keen eyesight, or who appear to be sizing them up. So, I had to be particularly attentive without seeming to be, act casual but not give the impression I was actually comfortable walking the sidewalks of this shady area of town, and generally just attempt to blend in with my environment and not stand out. While wearing two coats and sweating.