Talon Rotten charged into the bar with a burning rage.  The dive rang its usual beer-soaked buzz, though it was still fairly early.  Talon’s eyes scanned the place up and down until they landed on their target, Darnell Delaney, who was sitting on a stool toward the back, a captive audience of patrons watching in sheer awe as he magically made two cigarettes part with his hands.<br/><br/>Before he would execute the trick, Darnell would rub his hands together dramatically, explaining the wonders of static electricity to tipsy truck drivers, dubious drifters or the occasional down-on-his-luck realtor who might as well have had a big, festive<span style="font-style: italic">just-divorced</span>sign dangling from the back of his Honda as he drove up and shuffled in.  Darnell would even let some of the various people try the trick out themselves, but none of them could ever reproduce his sorcerous success.<br/><br/>In reality, Darnel couldn’t pull a rabbit out of a hat to save his life and Talon knew it.  But as obvious as it seemed to him, none of the spectators ever thought to look at Darnell’s partly parted lips, blowing the smokes in any direction he desired, nor did it occur to anyone that the two large coins which seemed to be mystically born out of a smaller one with the flick of Darnell’s fingers were tucked between his thumb and index finger the whole time, hidden behind the small coin until the time came to<span style="font-style: italic">transform</span>it into the two larger silver pieces.  Talon saw seams everywhere; and he considered it both a blessing and a curse.  His talent had spared him a steaming pile of trouble in the past but the trade-off was that simple things like movies and magic tricks were less enjoyable.<br/><br/>“Hey, boss,” the amateur magician exclaimed as he stared at the bleeding cut across the bridge of Talon’s nose, “how’d it go?”<br/><br/>That must’ve been Darnell’s idea of withering sarcasm; there’s just no way that was a real question.<br/><br/>“Well, Darnell, to say I walked away empty handed would be a grave understatement.  Not only am I brandishing a brand-spanking-new broken nose— which hurts like hell, thanks for asking— Buck still has the cheddar he owes us and he’s made it pretty clear he has no intention of giving that shit up,” Talon didn’t usually need to spell things out to Darnell but what the hell, “Go get the goddamn truck.  We got some shit of our own we need to make crystal-clear.”<br/><br/>Sean Paul's<span style="font-style: italic">Temperature</span>was blasting out over the impressive sound system in Darnell’s truck.  It wasn’t by any means Talon’s taste but still, he found the song oddly catchy.  It took about forty minutes to reach the auto body shop by Lake Lola.  As he stepped down from the cab of the truck, Talon’s cell phone buzzed.  He flipped it open and read the text, “Just left Lola, gave her a good time.”<br/><br/>“That’s my boy,” he texted back to his son.  He remembered this was Levi’s last day with Emily, a girl he teased would be the future Mrs. Levi Rotten if he wasn’t careful.  Levi always insisted they were just friends, but Talon had often sung that same tune himself about Isabelle to anyone who brought it up back in the day.<br/><br/>“Oh, Isabelle…” he thought.  The ache of Isabelle’s fifteen-year-old memory was still fresh as a five-minute-old coat of paint.  What made it worse was his very deliberate decision not to let Levi in on the mysterious circumstances under which his now long-lost mother had so abruptly left the picture, but how could he?<br/><br/>“Ready?” Darnell’s voice brought Talon back to reality.  He tucked a revolver into the small of his back.<br/><br/>Taking up a construction hammer from the bed of the truck, Talon looked to Darnell, his beaten face brimming with eager anticipation, “I was born ready.”<br/><br/>“Where’d you even pick that up, T?”  Darnell asked smiling as he rolled his eyes and shook his head.<br/><br/>“<span style="font-style: italic">Big Trouble in Little China</span>.  Netflix it.”<br/><br/>A different Netflix selection was playing on the flatscreen in the office of Buck’s Auto Repair Shop, a documentary about orcas in captivity,<span style="font-style: italic">Blackfish</span>.  Talon remembered his son had told him about it a couple months back.  But the whales weren’t what needed saving today, no sir.  He snatched up the remote while Darnell slammed the door shut behind them and closed the blinds.<br/><br/>“Hey,” Wilbur Buckley shouted as the TV shut off, “what the hell do you think you’re…” he trailed off as he recognized Talon, “Oh, back for more, are you?”<br/><br/>Talon grabbed Buck’s arm and stretched it out across the table, lifting the hammer high above his head, “Let’s keep this simple, either you give me the money you owe me, or ten seconds from now, you won’t be able to so much as lift a fuckin’ wrench.”<br/><br/>“Okay!  Jesus, it’s in the safe.”<br/><br/>“What’s the combination?”<br/><br/>“Five-five-five-kiss-my-ass.”<br/><br/>Talon brought the hammer down hard on Buck’s pinkie finger.  The auto shop owner howled in excruciating pain.<br/><br/>“You were saying?”<br/><br/>“Two-seven-two-seven, you fuck…”<br/><br/>Darnell walked to the safe and punched in the code.  The metal box clicked open and Darnell began to remove several twenties from the safe.<br/><br/>“Take an extra sixty for the gas it took to get here,” Talon started, “it was a long-ass drive.”<br/><br/>Darnell took sixty more dollars and slammed the safe shut.<br/><br/>“He jammed his finger in the desk,” Talon said to a curious grease-covered employee on the way out.<br/><br/>“Thanks for comin’ out,” Talon added as an afterthought to Darnell on the drive back into town.<br/><br/>“No problem, boss,” Darnell answered as he produced the folded bills in gaudy fashion seemingly from out of thin air.  Talon took the money. “Anything else you can trouble me for?”<br/><br/>“Let’s just head back to the bar,” Talon said, “my son’ll probably be wondering where I am.”<br/><br/>“Doesn’t that boy ever hang out with his mom?” Darnell asked.<br/><br/>“Now,<span style="font-style: italic">that</span>would be a trick,” Talon thought.