George (Four)

Stumbled back to the Vanguard, huffing and puffing and sweating like a slob. The Diablo's logo was full on the wall and still wet. Some point, when I went after the one slob, second set of punks snuck back, finished the job. Stupid, stupid old man, let them get away with it.

Picked up the can by the bottom. I figured it mighta had some kinda prints I could pull, maybe run it past the cops, see if a match came back in 4 to 6 weeks. Maybe I could pay em off to speed it up, if I had the kind of flush they wanted to see. A five spot probably wasn't gonna do it.

I waited up till the sun decided to join me. Took a couple sponges to the logo while it was still kinda fresh, came off real nice. Runoff looked like dog puke.

Went back to the office. I gave Dara her present, them jeans [We discovered I could fit both my legs into one of those pants legs. -Dara]. I set the spray can and the key ring on her desk, real careful like. Gave her the rundown. She looked at me like I was drunk [A fair assumption with Trace. - Dara].

Laid in bed for an hour, but the coffee and being sober did the trick. Got up, walked over to her, her desk covered in powder. She told me the keys didn't have any clean prints on em. By this point, she'd had the spray can coated in black powder, pulled off a few partials with some masking tape. I slipped the locker key off the ring, told Dara I was going out. I left her my prints, in case I was too much of a slob picking it all up.

City's got 4 main Amtrak stops that'll take you out of the city. All near metro stops. Figured I'd play the odds, hit the one closest to the Vanguard, work my way outwards. Only took me three hours to find my way to Larson Central Station, 15 blocks away.

Closest to the city edge, there was a stupid amount of lockers, like a middle school in there. You could walk up and down all the rows and get lost. But sure enough, found 3917 on the ground, far corner. Slid the key and it popped open. Fresh duffel bag, there was a plastic bit in the strap where someone ripped off the price tag. Unzipped it, looked inside, and a buncha President Jacksons stared back. Just a whole bunch of flush.

Closed the locker door real slow, before I had a chance to get stupid greedy and try to steal all that flush. Put the key back in my pocket.

Someone yelled out from the side, and I heard the solid ping of metal on metal. It was 2 Diablos, still in orange, now with aluminum baseball bats. They wanted batting practice and right now I musta looked like spring training.

Turned the other way, and a real big Diablo blocked that end. Hair slicked back, veins on his hands, and he breathed real loud through a bent nose never got set properly. He really wanted to show me what it felt like, having a busted nose.