Sal's 'Strategic' Advice

Sal ‘The Fixer’ Moretti’s office was less an office and more a carefully curated shrine to organized chaos. The walls, if you could call them that through the stacks of overflowing filing cabinets and what looked suspiciously like a dismembered mannequin head wearing a fedora, were plastered with faded fight posters. The air hung thick with the scent of stale cigar smoke and something vaguely metallic, like old pennies and desperation. I perched on the edge of a chair that felt like it was actively trying to digest me, my palms sweating against my worn jeans.

Sal himself was perched behind a desk that was a veritable geological formation of paperwork, empty coffee cups, and what I suspected was a half-eaten sandwich that had achieved sentience. He was a man who looked like he’d been assembled from spare parts from a tailor’s shop and a back-alley pawn broker. His suit, while expensive, seemed to be perpetually a size too small, straining at the seams like a startled cat. He had a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, which darted around the room with the speed of a hummingbird on espresso.

“So, Artie,” Sal began, his voice a smooth, gravelly purr that made me feel like a mouse being sized up by a particularly well-dressed serpent. He tapped a manicured finger on a folder labeled in bold, slightly smudged letters: ‘PUMBLE, A. – THE RENT MONEY CHAMP.’ “The legend grows.”