Urban Renewal by Andrew Vachss

does—his crew wanted the cash, not the product.
    The Colombians were still looking for him. That’s why his next score had to be big enough to last them the rest of their lives. The rest of their lives
together
. No more dancing for her. He didn’t like the idea of men looking at her that way. Not at
his
woman. But every time he hinted that he wanted her to quit, Taylor always managed to talk him out of it.
    Naturally, his own crew was close by—you never pull a job in the same state twice. “You don’t
want
to meet them,” he’d told her. Promised they’d get this all sorted out pretty soon. Might be some blood spilled, but none of it was going to get on him.
    In the meantime, she brought in the money while he worked the edges. Once he took care of the planning—that was his role; guns were for fools—the
big
job, that
last
job was going to go down. Taylor earned good, but she couldn’t hope to make major bucks if she never left the stage. And he sure wasn’t going to
make
her do anything she didn’t want to do.
    Yes, he had to slap her around every so often, but only when she got too pushy. “You hear the word ‘When?’—don’t matter if the next word out her mouth is ‘Daddy,’ you do what you got to do. But you never leave a mark.” The old man had taught him both meanings of that last sentence, and Lawrence never forgot either one.
    I’m the one holding all the cards
, the player silently gloated, as he pulled
his
Lexus into the garage behind the building where
his
apartment was located.
    All he had to do was wait. The same way he’d waited for Chi-Town Terror to visit his mother years ago.

    “ A MAN with style can’t have all that ‘MF’ stuff come out his mouth,” the old man had told him. “You don’t need to sound like a preacher, but you got to have manners. Class. Always be professional. Don’t show your cards on your face.
    “Lawrence? That’s the kind of name a boy gets from his mama. You got that voodoo blood in you, shows everywhere. So you either a swamp nigger or a Creole prince. Which sounds better to you, huh? Try this one on for size: Jean-Baptiste. Nice, am I right? Okay, Jean-Baptiste LaRue. That’s gonna be you. ‘LaRue’—you know what it means in Creole? ‘The Street.’ Get it?
    “Now, you practice saying that name, saying it the way I just said it. I know where you can get the right ID, match you all the way. But ID’s like a custom suit—it’s got to
fit
to be right. That name, it’s special. You don’t say it like you spell it, so you got to know both. Cop looks at your ID, asks you your name, it got to come out like you been saying it all your life.”
    True Blue had passed on, but not before Jean-Baptiste had learned it all. Now he was as smooth as ice, and patient as a glacier.

    BUT WHEN he walked into an apartment that had been stripped to the bare walls, he could barely suppress the urge to go out, get a gun, and teach that bitch …
    Teach her what, fool?
True Blue’s voice echoed, as if the old man were right there with him, both looking at the empty space.
Take a half-dozen men to pull off something like this. You think that bitch got friends that good? Nah. This was something that got paid for. Time for you to float, boy
.
    Fighting for calm, he pulled the mate to Taylor’s phone from the pocket of his russet suede jacket and hit her speeddialed number. Number One, as he never failed to remind her.
    “You know what to do. And when to do it.” Taylor’s sultry voice, followed by the beep signaling voice-mail was coming next.
    Phone’s in my name
, he thought.
So she can’t cancel the account. When the next bill comes, I’ll know who she set this up with
.
    Breathing deeply, as if preparing to dive off a cliff, Jean-Baptiste walked through the spacious apartment. Every room had been emptied.
    Not my clothes!
He fought off panic. But when he saw that his own walk-in closet was as empty as the rest of the place, he had to summon all his