Invasion of Privacy

hit the ground. The hands brought me back up, face against the wall, my wrists twisted behind my spine as one hand on each side frisked me quickly.
    “I’m not carrying,” I said.
    One of the frisking hands rapped at my left kidney. The pain and nausea broke over me like a wave, my knees buckling a little.
    A man’s gruff voice spoke into my left ear. “And if you was?”
    I managed to say, “Then you’d be dead, and somebody else would be asking me these questions.”
    The one on my right arm spun me around. I braced my stomach muscles for the shot I expected from his partner, but the punch, with fingers stiffened at the second knuckle like a striking cobra, still penetrated deep, taking my breath away as it doubled me over. Then the other guy used the heel of his left hand to smack my forehead, whip-lashing my skull back against the brick. One hand from each gripped my lapels while the other hands pinned my arms against the wall. I was fighting the gag reflex and seeing stars, but I could also make out the two men.
    Both had dark hair, slicked back in a way that looked wrong, like they didn’t have the right cut for wearing it that way. Each wore a suit jacket, with fly-away-collar shirt open to the third button and a gold chain instead of a necktie. Olive-skinned, burly, and a few inches shorter than my six-two-plus, one guy had coarse features, the other fine.
    Fine said, “You been asking around about Hendrix Management, Cuddy. Why?”
    “You guys... have condos too?”
    Coarse tightened his grip on my lapel and pushed me against the wall harder but didn’t hit me. “You were fucking asked why, asshole.”
    “I’m representing... another complex. They—”
    Fine pushed me too. “That’s bullshit. Why?”
    “—they want to know how... good a company Hendrix—”
    Coarse pushed me again. We’d gone from a solid working-over to the schoolyard at recess, and I couldn’t see why. “Which complex we talking about here, asshole?” The line didn’t sound right coming from him, like Nancy on the phone. “Confidential.”
    Fine said, “You got any idea the pain we can cause you?”
    Coarse grinned at me. Nice teeth. “My associate here, he likes to kill people.”
    “Loves to kill,” said Fine.
    “Lives to kill.” Coarse grinning broader.
    Fine moved his lips to within three inches of my face. “We got a message for you, Cuddy.”
    “Simple message,” said Coarse.
    “Yeah, but real important,” said Fine.
    Coarse brought his Ups to the same distance from me as his partner’s. I could smell the mint on his breath. “You tell your clients, Hendrix ain’t interested in their business.” Fine said, “You don’t fuck around with Hendrix Management or its properties, capisce?”
    Coarse almost kissed me. “You don’t go see them, you don’t call them, you don’t even fucking think about them.”
    “Seems clear enough,” I said.
    Fine feinted, as if to give me another shot with the cobra hand. I tensed as best I could before he pulled his punch-“Don’t make us fucking deliver the message again, huh?” They both let go of me at the same time, Coarse hunching Ms shoulders, Fine shooting his cuffs like he’d just learned how that morning.
    Coarse said, “You stay right here.”
    Fine gestured toward the dumpster. “Enjoy the garbage, like we had to, fucking waiting for you.”
    “And don’t start up or anything before we’re ten minutes gone.” Coarse flicked his fingertips at me. “Capisce?“
    I watched them walk out, Fine forward, Coarse backward, watching me. When they reached the side street, they turned left and disappeared.
    I rubbed my stomach, coughing up some remnants of lunch that didn’t have any blood in them. As the adrenaline wore down, I shook a little too. The guys had come on hard, then backed off. They didn’t feel right to me, like they’d seen somebody else do this kind of routine and were trying to copy the model.
    So, maybe they were mob-connected and maybe they weren’t. I wasn’t sure, but I thought of one person who might be able to shed some light on the subject.

10

    H ey-ey-ey, Cuddy, how you doing.”
    A greeting, not a question. His right hand returning a car phone to its cradle on the console, Primo Zuppone looked up at me from the wheel of his Lincoln Continental, the same one he’d had when I first met him. Mid-forties, he wore a double-breasted blue suit that didn’t do much to hide his blocky body. The hair was still black and